


Souls of the Sea (Still Belong to Blue Tides)

by SecretEnigma



Series: The King's Skjald [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV, Vinland Saga (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't copy to another site, Fix-It, Gen, Gladiolus is Epic, Happy Ending, Hurt Gladiolus Amicitia, Hurt/Comfort, Leviathan Likes This Viking Soul, Protective Gladiolus Amicitia, Queen Sylva is a Good Mom, References to Past Life as a Viking, Saving the World by Getting Giant Sea Monster Mom On Your Side, Temporary Character Death, Thors Reincarnated as Gladiolus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23402347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma
Summary: Noctis is eight when the Marilith nearly kills him. Gladiolus is eleven when his king, his brother, (his son) his best friend, nearly dies and he is not there to save him.He swears that it will not happen again. Even if he has to follow his king all the way to the land of the Oracles across the sea to make sure of it.But then Niflheim soldiers fall from the sky and the children of the Oracle scream as their mother dies and Gladiolus- Thors-He never could bear to stand by and listen to children cry.
Relationships: Clarus Amicitia & Cor Leonis & Regis Lucis Caelum, Clarus Amicitia & Gladiolus Amicitia & Iris Amicitia, Gladiolus Amicitia & Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Gladiolus Amicitia & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Gladiolus Amicitia & Noctis Lucis Caelum & Ignis Scientia, Gladiolus Amicitia & Original Female Character(s), Lunafreya Nox Fleuret & Sylva Via Fleuret, Noctis Lucis Caelum & Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Noctis Lucis Caelum & Regis Lucis Caelum, Ravus Nox Fleuret & Sylva Via Fleuret, Sylva Via Fleuret & Gladiolus Amicitia
Series: The King's Skjald [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1479551
Comments: 30
Kudos: 232





	Souls of the Sea (Still Belong to Blue Tides)

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel one-shot to Those Who Walk Twice (Beneath the Blue Sky). This took ... forever to write but I am pleased with it. For anyone who finds this first, please go read the first part of the King's Skjald series before coming back to this, things will make more sense that way.
> 
> Also pssst I have a Tumblr if you wanna come see all my (many) FFXV AUs. Link is in my profile!

Thors had seen a lot of death in his life. Gladiolus didn’t remember all of it —didn’t even remember half— but he remembered **enough** to understand the concept of death from toddlerhood. To understand the pain of losing a comrade and sword-brother — _Gladiolus dreamed of it sometimes, of holding a comrade and shield-sibling in his arms as they bled out, of putting remains to rest and not flinching from the condition those remains were in_ —.

But all of that was Thors life. Something Gladiolus remembered, something that drove him on in his training, but not something he had ever **felt** on the same visceral level Thors once had. They were all just pictures and flickers, impressions of what it felt like more than actual feelings. Gladiolus understood death and loss, but the death of an enemy was different from the death of a loved one. It was something dim memories couldn’t fully teach or explain, and Gladiolus was content to leave it that way.

Until he turned eleven years old and Noctis almost died for the first time.

It had been on a field trip outside the Citadel, one that Gladiolus and Ignis normally would have gone on with their prince. But Ignis was sick with a cold and Gladiolus had extra training as punishment for a minor … incident with one of his former trainers —the man had made a snide comment about Noctis being spoiled, Gladiolus had maybe gone too far breaking the man’s arm in three places by “accident”—. So Noctis had gone with just his father and a host of Crownsguard to protect him.

A host of Crownsguard that weren’t enough to stop a **daemon** from tearing open Noctis’s car and trying to rip him apart before Regis and the rest of the guards could arrive and drive it off.

Gladiolus got the news the morning after. He had been sleeping during the attack and his parents hadn’t woken him up after Noctis had been rushed into the Citadel emergency medical wing, just waited until the next morning to inform him that Noctis —his charge, his ocean, his heart, his **konungr** — was in a coma after a daemon attack. It was the first time Gladiolus had ever **screamed** at either of his parents, let alone both, heedless of their excuses —there was nothing he could do, he needed his rest, Noctis was in good hands— or even what language he was using as he cursed and howled with the terror of the child he was and the fury of the commander he had once been. He had only stopped when Iris —his baby sister, his newest, his little flower— had started to cry from his tone.

His father was reluctant to take him to the Citadel after that, but he seemed to understand that Gladiolus would sneak into the Citadel by himself if that’s what it took and so instead took Gladiolus with him when he returned to the Citadel to handle the political fallout and comfort his king. His father led him into the medical wing, straight to a private room decked out more like a bedchamber than any of the white sheeted beds and sharp-smelling curtains they had passed to get there. Regis sat hunched over in a chair next to the bed, his deep blue eyes fixed on its occupant and seemingly unaware of the many beeping machines that crowded next to him.

The world turned grey.

Gladiolus shook loose of his father’s guiding hand and ran to the bedside, eyes locked on Noctis’s _too-pale-too-still_ form, something dark and agonizing and familiar churning in his gut. He stopped just short of the bed, hands hovering as the parts of him that were Thors **screamed** for him to do something —simple things, healing tricks he’d learned on the field, things that meant nothing and could **do** nothing here— and the parts of him that were Gladiolus begged to curl up and cry.

“He will live.” Gladiolus looked up at Regis’s voice, stared blankly at the tired-eyed king as he continued, “The doctors did what they could. He is hurt, and it will take him a long time to … to recover, but he will live.” Regis looked back down at Noctis, and Gladiolus could hear the soft pleading note in the man’s voice as he whispered, “He will wake up and live.”

Gladiolus’s gaze shifted back to the tiny form of his king, his ocean that now felt so frail and small —drained and exhausted, a tide drawn back from the shore, leaving Gladiolus helplessly beached and alone—, black hair splayed out on white pillows, skin too pale from lost blood and blue eyes trapped shut in unknown dreams. He didn’t hear anything the adults said after that, didn’t care to hear as he settled in the chair his father had just tugged Regis out of and reached out to cradle Noctis’s hand. He didn’t notice the adults falter in their talking when he began to sing for his little king. Songs of the ocean and the moon, the guiding stars and a tree that held worlds —songs Thors knew, songs Thors had once sung for another little boy with hair the color of the sun rather than the night—. There was nothing else he could do. Noctis was hurt, hurt so badly even his magic hid in sleep rather than face the pain of his body and Gladiolus was not a healer. He couldn’t take that pain away —all he could do was give pain, pain and death with a blade and oh he remembered this loathing for his own hands—.

All Gladiolus could do was fight things and the one time it had mattered most, he hadn’t even been able to do that. He had been **sleeping** safe in his bed while Noctis screamed and bled and almost died — _while comrades burned and ships shattered in towering waves, while blades tore through flesh too deep for any healer to fix_ —. He had failed Noctis. He had **failed** without even knowing until it was too late, until it was only by the skill of other hands and other blades that Noctis had been saved and Gladiolus-.

Gladiolus hated himself. Somewhere deep in his core. He bent double over the hand clasped in his and swore, in both of his languages and by every power he knew, that he would **never** let this happen again. Noctis would never travel without Gladiolus there to protect him. Gladiolus was his Shield, Noctis was His Konungr, and the place of any Shield was by His Konungr’s side.

There was a tiny voice in the back of his head that sounded like his father, one that told him this wasn’t his fault. That Gladiolus was only eleven and even if he’d been there, he wouldn’t have been able to help against the huge, multi-armed daemon his father had described. But the child Gladiolus was refused to acknowledge that reality and the fierce, feared Jom commander Thors had been remembered the strength of ferocity and the dangers even children could be when threatened. Both sides of him rejected the voice that sounded like his father, crushed it beneath fury and regret and worry and **promises** that it would never happen again so long as Gladiolus still breathed.

Thors had hated killing and violence, had only raised his sword in defense of others at the end of his life. Gladiolus had learned to feel the same from the memories painted in the back of his mind, had never dreamed of glorious battle and fame or fantasized of someday slaying great enemies. But for Noctis, for His Konungr, for the boy with sky eyes and an ocean soul that was **his** just as much as Noctis was Regis’s…

For that, Gladiolus would wade into a thousand battles. For that, Gladiolus would dye his hands redder than Thors’ had ever been.

So when Noctis woke up from his coma and the doctors muttered amongst themselves and to their king that there was nothing they could do to prevent Noctis from growing up wheelchair bound, that it would take the magic of the famed Oracle to let Noctis walk again —an Oracle who’s country was surrounded by Lucis’s enemy, an Oracle who lived half a world away—, Gladiolus was ready. He had already packed his bag, taken his father’s shortest sword —a gladius, the one most like the swords Thors had spent a lifetime wielding, the ones Gladiolus knew best by extension—, the emergency phoenix down from the house’s first aid kit, and stolen six of the special secrets out of the study that his father didn’t know Gladiolus was even aware of.

Noctis needed healing that was half a world away, and there was no way in helheim that Gladiolus was letting him travel without him again.

* * *

As Regis tried and failed to win a stare down with too-old amber eyes, he mused tiredly that really, he should have expected this. Gladiolus had made it very clear that he blamed himself for Noctis’s condition, that he believed his presence would have somehow changed the devastating events of that night despite the fact that Gladiolus was just a child. Regis should have **known** that the stoic eleven year old would find a way to follow Noctis to Tenebrae, with or without permission. Even if it meant folding his lean, tall-for-his-age body into the uncomfortable space beneath the back seats of the car where Regis wouldn’t dream of looking —he’d checked the trunk for stowaways, he wasn’t a complete idiot, but he hadn’t thought Gladiolus could even **fit** under the seats, let alone stay there for hours—.

Gladiolus had even brought a pack of supplies and a sword —Clarus’s gladius if Regis didn’t miss his mark—, and was currently staring at Regis with the same ferociously blank expression Cor had always worn right before he disobeyed orders to go fight something he shouldn’t. Or, in this case, follow Regis and Noctis on foot if he tried to send Gladiolus home without them, “Gladiolus…”

“I’m his _Skjald_ ,” snapped the boy tightly, the language of his previous life clashing harshly with the smoother King’s Speech that Regis could understand. A sign that Gladiolus was too stressed to be reasoned with —he never consciously used his previous life’s tongue around Clarus or Regis, only Noctis, otherwise it was a slip-up caused by exhaustion or fury or stress—. Gladiolus took a deep breath, one hand gripping the hilt of the gladius with white knuckles as he repeated slowly, “I’m his Shield. My place is ever at his side.”

“You are only **eleven** , Gladiolus-,”

“A king learns only when he has someone to lead!” Blurted the fire-eyed boy in front of him, “You said so yourself! I promised to stand by his side even when he stands still, that means I follow him, even when he is injured!” Regis exhaled slowly, trying to stay patient even as Noctis watched their argument with wide eyes from the back seat of the car. Gladiolus’s eyes narrowed, dark and sharp with a maturity he shouldn’t have mixed with an impulsivity he shouldn’t have been brave enough to follow through on at this age, “You’ve been fine with my guarding Noctis since I was **seven**.”

“That was in the Citadel. Surrounded by guards who were to ensure you never **had** to fight until you came of age.”

Gladiolus’s jaw tightened, “So now, when there are no other guards to keep him safe, you expect me to stay behind? You expect me to break my oaths because I’m a **child**?”

Regis paused. Leaned back slightly and really **looked** at Gladiolus. At the boy who was already tall enough to be mistaken for a scraggly thirteen year old, with his father’s dark brown hair the length of his shoulder blades half hanging in his face from where it had escaped its customary low tail, and his mother’s amber eyes that were always too old for his young face —always too keen, too knowing, like even now the warrior he’d once been lurked behind that gaze, assessing and waiting—. Gladiolus was too young to wear the tattoo symbolizing his line, but his shoulders were set and his back was stubbornly straight, like he could already feel the weight represented by the inked-on feathers of the great eagle that served as his family’s coat of arms and mark of pride. Clarus’s old gladius was strapped over his shoulders rather than at his hip —better for an initial strike, better maneuverability for a boy who was too small to wield proper great swords yet—, he had the strap of a backpack bulging with supplies clenched in one fist, and at his side was a small pouch Regis wasn’t certain he wanted to know the contents of.

Eleven years old and he already looked every inch the deadly, dedicated Shield he was supposed to still be growing into.

Eleven years old and he already looked ready to kill and die for his future king.

Regis closed his eyes and felt very old. _I’m sorry, Old Friend, there is no turning your son from his chosen path._ Not without risking Gladiolus escaping whatever minders Regis managed to find and taking off after them on foot, through dangerous territory and over unknown waters. He could not return to Insomnia to drop off Gladiolus personally either, he was on a tight schedule if he wanted to bring his son safely to the Oracle’s care without being discovered by Niflheim.

Regis opened his eyes, “Alright, Gladiolus. You win. But you must stay close to Noctis at all times and do **exactly** as I command,” Regis let his features harden, a king staring down a subordinate rather than a surrogate uncle talking to a wayward nephew, “am I understood?”

Gladiolus pressed a fist of his heart and dipped his head, “I understand, Your Majesty.”

Regis sighed and turned back to the car that he had stopped in the middle of nowhere after Gladiolus had finally been forced to uncurl from beneath the seats from the pain, “Get in the car, Gladiolus.” Gladiolus eagerly slid into the back seat next to Noctis, who hugged his Shield Brother and chatted softly with him as Regis started the car and pulled back onto the road with a dull feeling of dread.

That evening in a cheep hotel where no one would pay attention to a father giving a piggy back ride to his youngest son while his other happily opened doors for them, Regis set up the secure line and called Clarus.

The phone had barely gotten out half a ring when Clarus answered with a voice tight from barely suppressed hysteria, “Tell me Gladiolus is with you.”

Regis leaned back in the single, cheap, under-stuffed armchair that inhabited their hotel room, “Deep breaths, Clarus. He’s with me.”

Clarus obeyed the idle command, his breathing decidedly ragged from a mix of relief and worry and anger Regis could sympathize with, “I thought-. When he didn’t show up for his afternoon training I thought he might have just gone home. But Juno called me asking how his training was going, because he **wasn’t** home and no one had seen him since before you left and I-. Astrals I half thought-.”

“I know, Old Friend, I know.”

“What **happened**? Why didn’t you check the car?”

Regis eyed the half-open door to the bathroom, listening to the soft voices and gentle splashes coming from within. Noctis couldn’t stand on his own, let alone twist around enough to use the handheld shower head, so he was seated on the short stool Regis had stuffed in his armiger while Gladiolus helped him get clean —Regis had planned to do it himself, but he’d needed to call Clarus and giving Gladiolus the distracting task of helping Noctis had seemed like a good idea— “I did. I checked the trunk and there was no one in the front or back seats.” He could sense Clarus’s impending question and finished, “I did not anticipate needing to check **underneath** the backseats for any stowaways of Gladiolus’s height.”

“…He fit under there?”

“Barely. Enough to disguise his presence and with enough fortitude to stay there until it was too late for me to come back.”

Clarus sighed, heavy with a mix of exasperation and relief and anger. Regis could just picture his friend running a hand over his shaved head, blue eyes scowling at some inane wall as he muttered, “Of course he did. Astrals. I should’ve locked him in his room until you were long gone. I should’ve realized where he was when my gladius went missing from the rack-.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Clarus,” Regis interrupted gently, “you couldn’t have known he would take his devotion this far.”

“But I should have. He’s too stubborn for his own good. Too … too **dedicated**. I’d half thought he had run off into the wilderness on foot in pursuit of your car once I found out he was missing, Regis, then all I could think about after was how I should have known he would do something like that.” Clarus’s voice dropped lower, low enough Regis had to strain to catch it over the line, “I should have known better than to expect a warrior to abandon his son.”

Regis winced, gaze tracking toward the bathroom door again. None of them particularly liked to bring up Gladiolus’s … unique status —one who had Walked Twice, a warrior and sailor and father mixed into the body and mind of a dedicated Shield and child—. Partly because it was unfair to judge the boy by something he couldn’t change —Gladiolus had never asked to remember who he had once been, of that Regis was certain— but also because it was … unsettling to remember. Back in Insomnia they could go for days without thinking about it. Without looking at Clarus’s son and seeing anything but a calm, easygoing boy with an extraordinary talent for swords and a deep devotion to Noctis. Then something would happen, or Gladiolus would say something, or they would overhear Noctis using words in a forgotten language that he’d picked up from his Shield and the knowledge that Gladiolus **wasn’t** entirely a child —hadn’t always been a child, had once been a killer and a father and a commander of men— would slap them in the face again.

It hurt Clarus to think of his son living a lifetime without him and then dying painfully. It hurt Regis to look into the eyes of a boy who loved like a father even though he let Noctis call him brother and know that Regis would not be the only one torn apart when the prophecy came for his baby boy. It hurt them both to sometimes look into the eyes of someone who should be a brash, happy child and see a deadly, silent ghost staring back.

Regis rubbed his face with a hand and dragged his mind back to the conversation, “Yes, I suppose we should have. But what is done is done.”

“…You aren’t sending him back, are you.” Clarus sounded tired, or like he needed a stiff drink. Regis sympathized.

Resting his hand on the armchair and keeping half an ear on the sounds of Gladiolus turning off the shower and helping Noctis get dry, he answered, “I’m sorry, Clarus. You know that I can’t. Any keeper to which I entrust him will undoubtedly lose him on the road back and then he really **will** be pursuing us on foot.”

“You could drop him off at Hammerhead. Cid would keep him in one place until I came to pick him up.”

Regis shook his head even though Clarus couldn’t see it, “That would set back our timetable by almost five hours. We can’t afford that kind of delay. The boat will be waiting for us at Cape Caem only three days from now, if we are late, it will leave without us rather than risk Imperial detection.” Clarus took a ragged breath on the other end and Regis murmured, “I’m sorry, Old Friend. But the only course of action I have is to take him with us.”

“…I know, Regis, I know. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

The boys shuffled out of the bathroom, Noctis’s hair a flyaway mess from Gladiolus’s sloppy use of the hairdryer, his carbuncle pajamas riding up his legs a little as Gladiolus piggybacked him to the nearest bed with a smile and a low mutter of his ancient tongue. Regis smiled at the sight for just a moment before he said, “Tenebrae has always been a staunch ally. He will be safe with us.”

“And if he isn’t? If something goes wrong?”

Gladiolus looked up from where he was tucking Noctis into bed, his eyes eerily alert, as if he could hear his father’s voice on the other end —he couldn’t, Regis was certain, but Gladiolus was smart enough to deduce the line of conversation from just Regis’s words—, “Nothing will go wrong, Old Friend. Our journey is too secret. Besides, Niflheim wouldn’t dare lay a hand on the Oracle line, they would have the entire world calling for their heads if they did.”

“…I pray you’re right about that, Regis. I want all three of you back safely.”

“As do we all. But, I have to put my son to bed now, Clarus.”

“Hand the phone to Gladiolus. We need to have words.”

Regis stood up from the chair and passed a grimacing Gladiolus the cell phone, watched Gladiolus shuffle to the far corner of the room to listen to his father’s phone lecture while Regis sat down on the edge of Noctis’s bed, pulled his son’s favorite storybook free of armiger, and began reading aloud like he used to when Noctis was only four. In the morning, they would resume their long drive to Cape Caem. In three days, barring complications, they would be safely on a boat bound for Tenebrae, disguised as just another family of fishing fans on a payed tour of exotic waters. Within two weeks time, they would be in Tenebrae, where Noctis would get the treatment he needed for his back. And in the time it took to heal Noctis and then return…

Regis would take precautions. As much as it pained him to consider them.

* * *

Luna folded her hands and did her best not to fidget. Her mother was still exchanging formalities with their visitors and Luna knew that it would be most improper for her to interrupt before they were finished and she was properly introduced, even if this meeting was taking place in one of their private suites and not the throne room. She tried to distract herself from the soft buzz of her magic beneath her skin by staring —discreetly, of course, she was a princess after all— at their guests.

King Regis was very dignified. A tall man with narrow shoulders and short black hair combed primly back and his beard was cut very short rather than thick and bushy like the foresters preferred. His eyes were a deep, sky blue that matched his tie. His blue tie was the only colorful thing about his clothing. Everything else was black —the official color of the Lucis Caelum family— with just a few hints of gold in his cufflinks and a chain that might have been a pocket watch. His son, Prince Noctis, looked a lot like him in Luna’s mind. Much smaller, of course, but she thought they had the same cheeks and shoulders, and the prince’s hair was just a black —his eyes were even bluer though, blue as her sylleblossom flowers—. He was so very small and pale though, slumped tiredly in his wheelchair no matter how he tried to hide it and look proper, his limbs all bony in a way Luna knew from her beginning healer training was unhealthy.

She wanted to go to him. It was a tug on her soul, a … a **need** she couldn’t shake. Prince Noctis was **her** prince —her king, Chosen King, King of Crystal and Dawn— and the tired bags under his eyes made her hands tingle with the urge to go and help somehow. Even if she was not a full fledged Oracle. Her magic longed to reach out and tangle with the heartbeat of ocean-deep magic curling shyly around the prince’s body without his knowing —he had so much magic, strong and bright but also scared and tired—. She could not though. Not yet. Not until the introductions were finished and permission to approach was given.

To distract herself, she shifted her gaze to the boy standing behind Prince Noctis’s wheelchair, his hands behind his back in a soldier’s rest. She … couldn’t really tell how old he was. He was tall, all limbs and corded muscle but none of the frame to fill them out. Luna almost thought he might be Ravus’s age, but he seemed far too … short and gangly —as rude as that sounded even in her head— to be sixteen. Maybe he was a year or two older than Luna, thirteen or fourteen and just slender for his age. He was very serious though. Even more serious than Ravus. The boy had not said a word since disembarking from the ship that had kindly smuggled them into port, just carried Prince Noctis to the wheelchair provided and then pushed it with a silent sort of dedication that made her think he might be the prince’s future Shield. It would explain the short sword strapped over one shoulder and the black of his clothing.

Her eyes trailed up to his face and she jolted despite herself when she realized that he was watching her. He knew she was staring at him and he was staring in return. After a moment’s hesitation, Luna tilted her head just a bit so that she could openly meet the gaze of this tall boy with all but a few stray locks of wavy brown hair captured in a low ponytail that didn’t look the least bit appropriate in such a formal setting.

Oh.

This boy wasn’t **young** at all.

Amber eyes studied her with a placid sort of curiosity that reminded her a lot more of Gentiana than a human boy. There was an **age** there, lurking just under the surface, a tired wisdom and focused edge that made Luna feel … small. Most people outside the Manor looked at her with awe because she was the next Oracle, treated her with reverence and respect like she was somehow already wise and powerful when she was really only twelve. But this boy … this warrior … he looked at her like he could see her. Like he didn’t see a princess or an Oracle-in-training but just saw … Luna. Twelve year old Luna with pale blue eyes and white-gold hair. Small and young and definitely not anyone to expect miracles of just yet. The Luna that she saw in the mirror every morning rather than the one the world at large always saw.

He looked at her like he could see right through her and down to the immature magic humming in her soul, all flitting golden sparkles rather than her mother’s powerful golden fire. He looked at her like he had seen her before, or at least seen her **like** before, and was completely unsurprised to find that she was the same way. It was scary, on some level, to be looked at like that, and she wondered uneasily if this was why people rarely looked her mother in the eye —if the whispers of the servants that Oracles could see into people’s souls felt like this, because this was almost painful in its depth—.

Then, just before she could drop her gaze to her shoes to avoid the knowing age in the boy’s gaze … he smiled at her. Just a tiny thing. A quirk of the lips that was just small enough to avoid notice in all the formalities of the adults, but that little gesture made the age in his eyes go from something powerful and dangerous to something … warm. Large and powerful still, but gentle and bright. It made the age in his eyes soften into something far less scary and more just … puzzling.

It made her suddenly think of her dim recollections of her father. She had only been four when he died and most of her memories of him were blurry, but she … remembered him looking at her like that. Old and gentle and warm.

Luna dropped her gaze to the floor, a blush tingling in the skin of her ears and cheeks that had Ravus nudging her in concern. Luna shook her head just a fraction to let him know she was fine and tried to concentrate on the greeting formalities again, hoping that she would get to be introduced to Prince Noctis —and his mysterious companion— soon.

She was not allowed to meet Prince Noctis soon. She didn’t even get to say hello. After the required formalities were **finally** over, Prince Noctis was whisked away to the extra bedroom attached to the suite. It had been discreetly converted into an infirmary to keep Prince Noctis’s required movements to a minimum, and even though she was an Oracle-in-training, Luna was not yet allowed to help treat his grievous injuries —or even witness his treatment, as staring at a foreign dignitary’s wounds would be rude—. Instead, Luna and Ravus were herded away to return to their normal life, as if their Chosen King wasn’t **here** , in the Manor, just a few floors away.

They managed to escape the servants that had led them out and doubled back to the suite half an hour later in the hopes that the initial examination would be done —they both wanted to meet Prince Noctis, both felt an irresistible tug toward him through their magic, though Luna’s was a stronger urge since she was the next Oracle—. Steel slithered free from its sheath the moment they opened the doors and Luna froze under the burning gaze of too-old amber eyes. Ravus half tugged her behind him in defense, but the boy who had stood behind Prince Noctis’s wheelchair during the introductions was already sheathing his sword again, the burning danger retreating to a more cautious gleam, “My apologies, Your Highnesses,” said the boy smoothly, his voice far too high and young for someone with eyes that old, “I was not expecting your visit and the servants were instructed to knock first.”

Luna dared to enter the room fully, Ravus on her heels as he shut the door behind them. Luna curtsied slightly, “O-our apologies for startling you.”

Ravus scowled, more insulted than sorry, “You just drew a sword in our **home**. We are the Oracle line and Lucis’s closest allies, no one is going to threaten you here.”

The boy tilted his head in a silent sort of apology, but made no move to unbuckle the sword from his shoulders, “I know. But it’s always better to be safe than to be sorry. My duty is to protect Prince Noctis. That is true in the heart of the Citadel where he was born and raised, that is true here in foreign halls, no matter how welcoming they may be.”

Ravus opened his mouth, closed it, visibly assessed the boy across from them, “You are a Crownsguard then?”

The boy shook his head, then pressed a fist over his heart in polite salute, “Gladiolus Amicitia. I am Prince Noctis’s Shield.”

Ravus crossed his arms and jutted his chin in that way Luna knew meant he was going to be rude, “Pardon but, aren’t you a bit … young to be King Regis’s choice of escort? We would have expected him to bring the Marshal or a Crownsguard if he felt the need to bring his own escort.”

Gladiolus smiled, all teeth and dark humor, “I … volunteered.”

Luna decided to intervene before Ravus could say anything that might provoke their guest, “Well, it is an honor to meet you, Gladiolus.” She smiled at him and was gratified when his smile softened to something genuine in return, “I am so glad Prince Noctis already has such a loyal and dedicated Shield at his side.”

Gladiolus tilted his head the other way, then gestured toward the sitting room chairs in silent invitation, “You seem very concerned over Noctis when you haven’t even met, Princess…”

“Lunafreya. Lunafreya Nox Fleuret. This is my brother Ravus. And of course I am concerned,” Luna tilted her chin up, trying to look as mature and dignified as possible —from the amused glint in his gaze, she didn’t think she succeeded—, “Noctis is the Chosen King and I am to be his Oracle.”

Amusement gave way to sharp curiosity and Luna and Ravus spent the next few hours conversing with Prince Noctis’s Shield, telling him about the Oracles and the prophecy of the Astrals, and how Noctis was the Chosen King of that prophecy, destined to —with Luna’s help— someday purify the world of the starscourge. Gladiolus proved as intelligent as the age in his eyes suggested, eager to learn and unafraid to ask questions, even if it meant asking the blunt ones that would have scandalized any of Luna’s tutors. Ravus seemed caught between liking Gladiolus for his blunt honesty and being insulted with the boy’s irreverence, especially when they learned he was only eleven —a year younger than Luna!— rather than the thirteen or fourteen they had assumed.

As the weeks passed in their stay —she was finally introduced to her prince three days after his arrival and then allowed to take him almost anywhere in the Manor in between his treatments—, Ravus spent almost as much time in Prince Noctis’s presence as Luna herself. Not because of Prince Noctis though —Ravus liked the prince, but did not have the same patience with Prince Noctis that Luna did, could not feel the same instant and deep connection between their magics like the Oracle and her Chosen King—, but because it was the only way to talk to Gladiolus.

The Shield took his duties seriously —too seriously in Ravus’s open opinion—, accompanying Prince Noctis wherever he went and standing guard outside the infirmary whenever Luna’s mother was busy healing him. He always had his sword slung over his shoulder and a bulging pouch of … something tied to his belt as well, even during meals where he stood silently behind Prince Noctis’s wheelchair. Further, no matter where they went or what they were doing —formal dinners with Mother and her council to playing out in Luna’s garden—, there was always a large knapsack stashed within easy grabbing distance —often slung by its strap to the back of Prince Noctis’s wheelchair—. When Luna asked about it, he told her that it was emergency medical, food, and weapon supplies for “just in case”. Ravus took deep offense to the thing’s very existence —this was the heart of Tenebrae, the seat of the Nox Fleuret’s power, Gladiolus had no need to keep an emergency bag like that on his person all the time— but Luna just found it reassuring that her prince’s Shield was so dedicated and prepared.

Despite his vocal skepticism of Gladiolus’s methods and disapproval over his paranoia, Ravus seemed to like being around Gladiolus a lot —Luna suspected that her brother was lonely, there weren’t any children that would treat them as equals like Gladiolus did after all—. Luna and Prince Noctis grew accustomed to the sounds of Gladiolus and Ravus sparring or arguing nearby during their days outside, wooden swords clacking rapidly against each other only to end —inevitably— in Ravus giving a baffled yield after Gladiolus had yet again disarmed him or “killed” him —Prince Noctis bragged that his Shield was a prodigy at the blade and Luna believed him, she didn’t think even the Manor guards were that fast and precise with a sword—.

As Prince Noctis slowly regained the use of his legs and Gladiolus stopped tensing the moment anyone opened the door, Luna wistfully wished things could stay like this forever. Her with her prince and Ravus with his new friend, spending the majority of their days happily talking, sparring, playing, and learning together. She knew, of course, that it would all have to end someday. Probably someday soon, the way Prince Noctis’s treatments were progressing … but even so…

She never dreamed everything would end in fire.

* * *

Something was wrong with today.

Gladiolus couldn’t pinpoint why, but it put him on edge. Made him as paranoid and alert as he’d been when they had first arrived in Tenebrae. It drove him to triple check the edge on his sword, the phoenix down hidden in his pocket —that Regis still remained unaware of—, and the pouch on his hip. It made him sneak into the kitchens of the Manor and beg extra food from the indulgent cooks that thought he was cute —like a puppy learning to guard rather than the warrior-killer he had once been— to shove into his already bulging knapsack and rearrange things to squeeze in just one more waterskin.

He kept the knapsack closer than usual as he followed Lunafreya —Little _Tunglskin_ , the moonlight of his _Konungr_ that reminded the parts of him that were Thors so much of Ylva— and Noctis out into the large clearing that had long ago been carved out of the jungle for some kind of Tenebraen holiday ceremony. It was apparently a huge honor to be included, and Regis was smiling at he looked back over his shoulder from where he had been greeting Queen Sylva —a good woman, strong and gentle, with white-gold hair and blue-blue eyes that reminded him a touch too much of Helga for comfort sometimes—. Everyone was smiling, even the Tenebrae council. Even **Ravus** and he spent far too much time trying to act older and more serious than he was. The air was clear, the late morning was bright, and through the circular gap in the tree foliage above their heads the sky was blue-blue-blue.

Blue as the day Thors had died. Blue as the day the arrows rained down and Thorfinn cried-cried-cried.

Perhaps it was those memories that made him realize the danger first. That tingling, on-edge sensation that let him feel the thrum of engines above their heads and look up in time to see the blue sky turn gunmetal grey from the huge dreadnought flying overhead. Gladiolus’s sword was suddenly in his hand without any memory of drawing it, his voice screaming for everyone —Luna, Ravus, Regis, **Noctis** — to **run** as the sky began to rain enemy soldiers. Lunafreya took off across the rocky ground, pushing Noctis’s wheelchair as fast as she could —not fast enough-not-fast-enough— as something **much** heavier than the MTs Gladiolus was cutting through hit the ground. The massive suit of armor —General Glauca, Gladiolus had seen pictures of him in the reports on Cor’s desk sometimes— straightened up-.

Everything turned into a slaughter.

Somewhere in the frenzy of cutting through the Units and trying to cover for Noctis’s and Lunafreya’s retreat, he heard Queen Sylva scream her son’s name. Gladiolus turned in the direction of the sound and saw fire. He saw a parent sacrificing her life for her son, saw the massive blade of the enemy general pierce tender flesh while Ravus screamed —somewhere in the back of his head there was another child screaming, screaming and sobbing and begging and not again, Gladiolus-Thors-Gladiolus **-Thors** **wouldn’t let it happen again** —. His first oath was to Noctis —His Konungr, his Ocean, his Son and Heart— but his first **instinct** was that of a father who had already died listening to one child scream.

As Regis sent General Glauca flying with a blast of magic, snatched up Noctis in one arm and Luna’s hand with his, Gladiolus changed direction and **ran**. Behind him, Noctis started screaming too —Regis yelled for him to come back, **ordered** him to do so but Thors-Gladiolus-Thors did not answer to that king, not here, not now—. Ravus trembled at the side of —the corpse— his mother, looked up with panicking, mismatched eyes, “H-help, please- please- help us! I can’t-!” Gladiolus un-shouldered his knapsack and shoved it into Ravus’s arms to free up the hand not clenching his sword. He yanked the phoenix down he’d pilfered from his family’s first aid kit out of his pocket, rolled Queen Sylva’s _burned-broken-bleeding-burned_ body over with a rough shove and slammed the golden-orange-red feather against the too-still chest.

Queen Sylva’s eyes snapped open with a beleaguered gasp of air and a jolt of _life-magic-burning-life_. She sat up sharply, then doubled over with a smothered scream, hands covering her abdomen where the sword wound was only **mostly** shut —he’d almost been too late, cut it so close and with wounds so bad even a phoenix down hadn’t healed all of it—. Gladiolus had no time to coddle her, no time to let Ravus sob with relief and reach for his mother’s embrace, “Get up!” They both looked at him, for a moment too dazed to understand —or maybe he had just yelled in Thors’ language he couldn’t tell anymore, the two sides of himself were mixing and blending in all the wrong ways as memories merged with reality—, “ **Get up**!” He roared, grabbing Ravus with his free hand and dragging the boy to his feet, eyes tracking the MT Units still too busy massacring the council to notice that two of their victims had survived the initial assault, “You need to run, understand?”

He dragged Sylva up next and forced himself to concentrate on the correct language long enough to bellow one word, “ **Run**!”

Realization snapped into place in newly revived eyes and she didn’t hesitate, just grabbed Ravus’s arm at the elbow and fled for the jungle, her son stumbling and staring over his shoulder the entire way, eyes wide and arms wrapped tight around the knapsack Gladiolus had shoved on him. Gladiolus didn’t follow them yet —not yet, didn’t dare do it yet—, instead he hurled himself into the fray with a bellow that was an echo of Thors in his head. MTs went down, fast and hard in groups and solo units, never given enough time to track their attacker and fire, barely given the time to scream before the next one was already falling. Gladiolus’s limbs were already burning from the strain of his speed, but he didn’t stop. He had to get to Regis-Noctis-Luna-Noctis, he had to make sure no one followed them.

He couldn’t see Regis and Noctis anymore, prayed to anyone listening that it was a sign they had escaped and not that he had failed —he would have felt them die, surely, would have sensed Noctis’s ocean-depth magic snuff out if they burned—. He couldn’t see them and the MTs were beginning to truly notice him, he would be overrun soon. He shifted to run into the jungle himself, rendezvous at the hidden dock where he knew an emergency boat was waiting just in case.

Then he spotted a knot of MTs that weren’t firing. They were crowding around something, around **someone** , like guard dogs on a prize. Caught a glimpse of white-gold hair and stained white fabric in their roiling midst-.

He changed course one more time.

* * *

Luna was terrified. Terrified and shaking and hysterically wondering why she had done that. Why she had pulled her hand free and **stopped** —she knew why, because the units would stop to capture her, at least some of them would, and that would buy Prince Noctis just a little more time to escape—. But now she was alone in the midst of clanking metal that oozed an air of _wrong-screaming-pain-wrong-wrong_ and the stench of burned bodies and grass was everywhere and mother-was-dead-Ravus-was-silent-she-was- **alone-**.

She almost didn’t notice the first MT go down. Two more were already falling by the time she did and looked around. Three more had hit the ground by the time her ears fully registered the **howl** of fury-bloodlust-war echoing around as someone slammed into the flank of the group holding her captive and began massacring them with almost supernatural speed. Luna stared, with dry eyes and open mouth, caught between seeing one impossibility — _Gladiolus, eleven year old Shield-in-Training Gladiolus, cutting through his enemies’ weak points with unnatural speed and skill_ — and another — _a tall man in leathers and chainmail and fur, a towering warrior giant with burning eyes and a thunderous voice, hacking apart her captors like they were melting butter_ —. She blinked and her vision settled on Gladiolus as he lunged at her, knocked her to the ground with a shout that made no sense —rolling and primal words, another language that reminded her of the sea and storms—.

Foreign magic tingled against her skin and she caught a glimpse of him reaching into the pouch on his hip and throwing something before the world shimmered over green and the world cracked open into the bright lights and clamoring roar of thunder —everywhere, all around, not far off like thunderstorms but **right there** so close it burned her eyes and shook the marrow of her bones—. Above her, Gladiolus trembled and flinched through the onslaught, his scream of pain audible only because his mouth was right next to her ear as he pinned her down —shielded her with his body to compensate for the cracks and holes forming in the magic shield above them—.

The thunder stopped, but the ringing in her ears kept going even as Gladiolus dragged her to her feet and started running. Luna tried to tell him he was going the wrong way —this wasn’t the way King Regis and Prince Noctis had gone, he was heading for the wild jungle where no shelter would be found—, but she couldn’t even hear herself think, let alone say anything to the boy who moments ago had looked like a towering warrior —the boy who stank of charred flesh and who’s shirt-back was torn open to reveal ugly red burns from the lightning he had protected her from—. The MTs didn’t follow them. The MTs were destroyed. Spasming, twitching hunks of metal lying in a rough circle around where Luna and Gladiolus had been when the thunder came — _magic,_ she realized distantly, Gladiolus was using magic, had King Regis blessed him with it in preparation for their stay in a foreign land?—.

The jungle rushed up to meet them as Gladiolus dragged her along, heedless of his back, still clutching his sword in one hand as they ran-ran-ran, ducking the bullets that began to whizz over their heads as new Units spotted them and gave chase. They ducked around trees and under vines to lose their pursuers, winding and turning until Luna was dizzy with it despite having lived in Tenebrae all her life —at least the bullets stopped, the Units were not as agile as they were, couldn’t keep up in the foreign, tricky terrain—. She still couldn’t hear much past the persistent, shrill ring in her ears, but Gladiolus seemed to hear something, because he paused for a moment in the cover of a tree, head turning in one direction before he cursed loud enough for her to catch it and dragged her off in a new direction. She let him, too dazed at that point to do anything else. Didn’t resist when he suddenly shoved her into the cover of a leaning, creeper-ridden tree. He dragged the creepers overtop of her, pressed a hand against her chest in a silent command to stay before he took off again.

Luna sat there for what might have been seconds and might have been years, heart drumming a backup rhythm for the fading ringing, body shaking from adrenaline and throat sore from running —from gasping in air tainted with blood and steel and burned bodies, all nightmare fuel for years to come—. Then the same strange combination of fear and care and determination that had made her stop for Prince Noctis’s sake drove her to her feet again and made her stumble off in the direction Gladiolus had gone. She didn’t have to go far. He had gone maybe thirty yards into the jungle, to a clearing that held, impossibly, her **mother** and **brother**.

And General Glauca.

_No. No-no-no not again, please Astrals not again._ She had already seen this Behemoth of a man murder her mother once. She did not want to see him do it again —did not want to see him kill Ravus and Gladiolus too—. She smothered a sob behind her hands, heart lurching about in her body like a ball on a tether as she spotted Gladiolus, standing across from Niflheim’s **prized general** with his short sword clenched in one hand and his hip pouch in the other. Unlike when he had crashed to her rescue just minutes ago —or had it been hours she couldn’t tell—, his face was utterly calm. There was no shouting, no roaring in a foreign tongue. His lips were not curled in a frenzied snarl nor was he moving with the speed of a rabid Coeurl to attack the much, much bigger man. He was just … standing there, body loose in a stance Luna didn’t recognize from either her own or Ravus’s training, sword tip tracking General Glauca’s every twitch. He wasn’t even panting from their long run, his breathing looked as steady as her meditation tutor, like he wasn’t facing down his own death in the form of Niflheim’s greatest warrior.

She wondered why General Glauca hadn’t cut him down yet.

Then Gladiolus’s chin lifted, shifting his long brown hair —torn free of its ponytail at some point in either his fight or their run— out of his face, and she saw his **eyes**.

Glacial cold, honed to a razor edge and forged into two amber eyes. There was no fury in those eyes, no pain or grief or fear or rage. The body might have been an injured boy’s, and his enemy might have towered over him like a Behemoth to a Reapertail, but those eyes…

Those were eyes that had seen cities burn and fleets sink, that had watched warlords bleed out and battlefields fall silent as graves because everyone else was **dead**. Those were the eyes of someone who had survived the fall of nations … because **he** was the one who had toppled them.

Those were Death’s eyes.

And as strong and tall and terrible as General Glauca was, he was still human somewhere under that armor. And like all humans, Glauca feared Death.

“Walk away.” Luna jolted at the sound of Gladiolus’s voice —too still, too calm, too **high** and deceptively young for the undercurrent of power it held—, she hadn’t even realized her ears had stopped ringing enough for her to hear. Gladiolus didn’t move to attack or retreat, just stood perfectly still and repeated, “Walk away, General Glauca,” he said with almost exaggerated care, a strange, rolling accent thickening words that she would have thought would be natural to him, “enough people have died for your Empire today. You cannot have the heads of the Oracle line too.”

General Glauca scoffed and lifted his sword higher, but made no move to actually attack the boy less than half his size, **“Oh? And what will I gain from obeying the orders of the spoiled child of Lucis’s precious Shield over the orders of Emperor Aldercapt himself?”**

“Your life.” Gladiolus answered and in those two words Luna heard both promise and threat, fact and warning all coiled into two deceptively placid words.

General Glauca didn’t move for several long seconds, the silence too heavy to break, those amber eyes too sharp and deadly to deny. Then Mother shifted just a fraction, like she was trying to push Ravus away from the conflict and further into the jungle behind her, and the sound of her movement was like the gunfire they had left behind. General Glauca whirled, sword raised, and Luna screamed for them —not again, please not again, she couldn’t bear this again— in the same heartbeat Gladiolus moved. The bellow General Glauca gave was wordless. All disbelieving fury as his back arched away from the pain of the blade sliding up between the slenderest of gaps in his armor plating —a gap Luna hadn’t even realized was there until she saw Gladiolus’s blade slide up to the hilt in it—. The crack of his armored elbow meeting Gladiolus’s body was sickening to hear and all Luna could do was watch Gladiolus fly across the clearing like a limp rag, General Glauca on his heels with a snarl that sounded demonic through the helmet.

Luna stumbled into the clearing in desperation as General Glauca caught Gladiolus in the air with one fist, held the boy above the ground and physically shook him by the neck as blood dripped-dripped-dripped down the blade still trapped in his armor, **“You little, disgusting child! There is no one here to save you, no one here to praise your idiocy. I am going to tear you apart for this!”**

Luna saw her mother straighten up despite Ravus’s frantic tugging, her trident in her hand and a grim expression on her face as she raised it and lunged a half-step forward, like she was going to try to help fight the Empire’s prized general to save Gladiolus — _don’t_ , Luna wanted to scream because she had already seen this man kill her mother once before, **_help_** _,_ she mentally begged anyone who was listening—. Then Gladiolus’s eyes opened, amber still glacially calm despite the blood he had to squint past and the rasp of his lungs. One hand clenched weakly around the gauntlet holding him up and he wheezed something to the General —the monster— holding him at arm’s length. General Glauca dragged him closer, face to helmet, **“What begs the child prodigy in his last moments?”**

Gladiolus’s lips turned upward into something that might have been a smile if it hadn’t looked so dark and bloody, “Hear me, Tide-Mother, one of your children … returns to your embrace. Hail … Ocean’s Queen … for into your judgement … I give this soul.” Amber snapped over to look at Luna’s mother, bright and clear despite the blood, “ **Run**.”

Luna barely had time to see her mother’s eyes widen, or register her grabbing Ravus’s wrist and sprinting across the distance to Luna herself. Barely felt her mother grabbing her arm to pull her to the ground before Gladiolus’s gaze shifted back to General Glauca with a triumphant smile-.

Smashed the hip pouch still clenched tight in one fist into the side of the General’s helmet.

The world **exploded**.

Fire and ice and thunder and **light**. Burning heat and freezing cold and agonizingly bright ozone all roiled together in a mass of magic and elements that glowed like a star on earth and almost totally swallowed the sound of General Glauca’s **screams**.

Then, as suddenly as it had exploded into being, the star of roiling, churning magic snuffed out, leaving behind a charred, blown apart shell of armor that had once contained a man and…

Gladiolus.

“Oh Astrals,” choked out Mother as she let them up and stumbled across the devastated clearing —the grass had been burned away by the fire, lightning had torn deep furrows into the earth which the ice had frozen solid and turned to grey mist— to Gladiolus’s side, “Oh Astrals.” Luna stared and wished she hadn’t, turned and threw up onto the surviving grass that had been just outside the blast radius as if that might eject the sight of Gladiolus —what was **left of him** — from her mind.

It didn’t, and as Ravus continued to throw up and sob into the ground, their mother called sharply —desperately— for Luna to come to her side. Luna didn’t want to, she didn’t want to come any closer to what was left of her friend-rescuer-warrior. But then she saw her mother’s golden magic burning in the air and heard her mother say, “He’s still breathing. Lunafreya, he’s still breathing but you must **help me** ,” and suddenly Luna was kneeling by her mother’s side, pushing her own magic into charred-frozen-torn flesh, frantically trying to save the boy who had just saved her family twice-over — _frantically trying not to think about what kind of “life” he would have if he survived this and whether or not letting him die would be more of a mercy_ —.

* * *

Water. He was underwater. So deep that he couldn’t see any sunlight, so deep that he could see only because of the twisting things that looked like coral and kelp all glowing in soft, cool shades of blue and green and pink. He exhaled a stream of bubbles, was somehow unsurprised when he inhaled air without difficulty. He looked around, curious of his surroundings and the twisting, glowing creatures no human could have ever dreamed of, but unafraid of being in a place so dark and mysterious. He was … in the ocean. This was the ocean. He could feel the cold currents winding past his fingers, the slow pulse of the tides all around him like an impossibly large, endless heartbeat. He was in the ocean, so deep that the sun and stars did not exist, so deep he doubted even the sturdiest of metal would survive without being crushed. Yet … he was fine. He was alive. He was calm.

How had he gotten here?

**“You do not remember, Mortal?”** The voice, feminine and regal, deep as the ocean in which he drifted, echoed from everywhere. From the currents and the tides, from the waving, glowing plant life and the twining sea creatures. He blinked silently at a nearby eel aglow with soft gold light. No. He didn’t remember. He tried to recall, pulled his mind away from the silent, dark beauty around him and cast his thoughts back…

Tenebrae.

Ambush.

War.

Death.

**“So you do remember.”** Hummed the voice like the steady creak of a ship as it cut through the waves —a proper ship, a viking ship, not the soulless, mechanical, lumbering thing that had taken him and Regis and Noctis to foreign shores—. He did remember. They had been staying in Tenebrae, attending an important holiday ceremony out in a jungle shrine not far from the Manor proper. Then Niflheim had attacked from the sky and everything had devolved into war and death and … pain. Magic. He had used the phoenix down he’d stolen from his family’s first aid kit on Queen Sylva, then he had been forced to pull on the still-foreign magic Regis had blessed him with to form a shield around Luna so she wouldn’t get hurt when he threw one of the other things he had stolen from his father’s study —the magical flasks, flasks of power that he **knew** grew more potent with age and knew had been hidden in that study for **years** —. The flask had been too strong for the clumsy shield he had only had a few months time to practice —much less than that, considering he had gone days without having the privacy to practice it sometimes— and he had flung himself on top of Luna to protect her from what broke through his fragile magic shield.

He had dragged her into the jungle, away from what he knew was the rendezvous point, **but** what he recalled as the direction Queen Sylva had run. The ship meant for Regis and Noctis to escape with in emergencies had —hopefully— already left them behind for Noctis’s safety —he hoped, he prayed— and the next best option had been to flee into the wilderness in the direction of the Queen and hoped he could catch up and she would know a safe, hidden place for a disaster like this. Except … except General Glauca had already found Sylva and Ravus, and Gladiolus had barely had the time to shove Luna into a hiding place before running to intervene in what he **knew** was a fight he could not win **and** survive.

**“You knew that to fight was to die, yet you fought anyway?”** Asked the feminine voice of the tides, deep and flowing as the soft echo of the currents all around. Yes. He had. He had known the moment he spotted General Glauca’s armor that saving the Tenebraen royal family from the man would cost him his life. He had rushed in anyway. He was a Shield, for all he was still in training, and they were allies of the royal family —friends of Noctis, a mother and her **children** and Gladiolus-Thors-Gladiolus could never stand aside and let children die—. So he had run in, he had bluffed the man for as long as he could, held him in place with force of will, using the techniques Thors had long known to make himself look intimidating just by standing still.

Then Queen Sylva had tried to make Ravus leave and the General had turned on them and … things got a little bit hazy after that. Gladiolus remembered spotting a momentary gap in that flexible, oddly fluid armor the man wore, remembered ramming the gladius up to the hilt in the chink and feeling the pain of being smacked through the air by an armored man almost three times his size. General Glauca had held him by the throat, raged and gloated at the same time, let Gladiolus have just enough time to … give Queen Sylva a warning? Tell her to run? Something. He remembered saying something to her.

Then he had smashed his hip pouch, still bulging with five flasks of old, well-aged and potent magic, into the General’s helmet. He didn’t know how resistant that armor was to magic, just that it was. But no matter how resistant it was to that single blast of lightning magic Regis had used…

Gladiolus had doubted that it was built to withstand five flasks decades old magic —two fire for the heat, two ice for the freezing cold, one lightning to strike metal made brittle by battling temperatures and **shatter it** — all going off in the same place at the same time. That was where his memories ended.

He blinked up at the dark, rippling waves all around and realized … that was where he had died. How else would he be here? Far, far away from any land, far from any place a human body could survive? Deep beneath the waves that had been his home once and would always be the home of his heart. **“Mortal.”** Gladiolus twisted his head to look around, because the tone of that single word was commanding, attention-seeking. Like the speaker wanted him to **look** at her rather than just drift and **oh**. There she was.

His mouth opened, unafraid of water rushing in because he instinctively knew it wouldn’t. He gaped for several long seconds at the twisting, seemingly endless coils of glittering silver-blue scales, all rippling like water in the shifting light of the glowing things. He took in the sight of endless scales and slowly twitching fins larger than any viking ship —bigger than the clunking metal thing that had carried them to Tenebrae— that shimmered iridescent even here in the darkness. She was all around him, surrounding him with her coils as she emerged from the dark to slowly circle him, one great, green-gold eye that was easily twice his height studying him critically. Leviathan. The Hydraean. The Tide-Mother.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The slow loops paused, just for an instant, and her visible eye focused on him thoughtfully, **“You do not fear me, Mortal?”**

Gladiolus hesitated. She seemed able to sense his thoughts, but she had asked him a direct question and … this time it felt like she wanted a direct answer. Despite being so deep underwater that sunlight did not exist, Gladiolus opened his mouth and spoke, “Of course I fear you, Great Tide-Mother. But that does not mean you are not beautiful.” He half startled as soon as the words had left his mouth because … he had two voices down here. One was the voice he knew from experience, young and childish, the voice of a gangly, too-tall eleven year old boy. The other … was Thors’. The voice he only heard in his dreams, the voice that hummed faintly in the back of his head when he needed knowledge on certain things. It was all blended up in with his usual voice, much clearer and stronger than his faded memories, but not overriding the voice that was **Gladiolus’s** rather than **Thors’**.

One massive fin stirred and Gladiolus focused outward again, **“Interesting. A soul who walks twice, yet has only touched this Star once. You have journeyed far, Mortal, to reach these oceans. Yet you do not hesitate to call me. With the breath you count as your last, you choose not to beg or spit or fight. You choose to call … me.”** She slowed to a stop so that her massive head was directly in front of him and her fins flared, all iridescent blues and shimmering silvers that **glowed** in the dark waters like starlight, **“Why? Is it not Bahamut,”** the name of her fellow Astral was spat almost like a curse, **“that you weak little humans follow now that you have turned your backs upon the Infernian and forced us to strike him down only so that you might forget the rest of us?”**

Gladiolus took a moment to gather his thoughts, to scrounge through his memory and find the moment to which she was referring. Oh … yes. He had called her, hadn’t he? Even if the Astrals were not gods, they were still guardians of Eos, keepers of its people, kings and queens of its elements and forces of nature. So in his last moments, he **had** called to her. Named her his keeper … because … “Steel.” Leviathan narrowed her eyes and Gladiolus kept speaking, pushing past the eerie sound of Thors’ voice twining with his, “Bahamut is Steel and Prophecy. He is the winner of wars.”

**“Yes. It is to him that most call out now that the Infernian has fallen and can no longer bless your foolish lives with Cunning and Ingenuity. You were in battle, little Shield-sworn of the Crystal King,”** again, she said titles like they were insults even though he could not comprehend why, **“Why did you not call out to Bahamut?”**

“Because I am not of war,” Gladiolus replied without fear. His voice ringing out with strong certainty where Thors’ went soft with tired sadness, “I am Gladiolus Amicitia, Shield-sworn of Noctis Lucis Caelum, but I do not love war. I know the song of steel in my hands better than any man three times my age, but it is not a song that has ever brought me more than the most fleeting of joys. I am sworn to fight until my last breath for the sake of king and hearth and home, but my home is not the battlefield.” He took a deep breath, blew out some bubbles as he gestured to the dark, shimmering waves around them, “My home is … here.”

Her massive head tilted, something akin to curiosity in her gaze, **“You are human.”**

“I am a viking. War was my profession, but the **sea** was ever my home.” Gladiolus corrected as fiercely as he dared, “There was a time where my life was tied to your waters for food, for transport, for safety, and for adventure. I may live locked away from the tides now, but that does not change that the waves are my home and the currents are my roads. Who else was I to ask for blessing in my final moments but you? Tide-Mother and Current-Keeper, Queen of the Oceans and Judge of All Beneath the Waves?”

Her great eye blew wide, something like shock vibrating in the waters around them. After what felt like both an eternity and only a moment, Leviathan murmured, low and almost gentle, **“You know my Titles. All of my titles.”** A tug on his soul, like the pull of the tides and her head jerked back like he’d slapped her, **“You…”** She exhaled, a great ripple of current as her pupil slitted and her coils shifted closer around him in something that seemed almost greedy. Possessive.

**“Child,”** she murmured at last, and Gladiolus couldn’t help but notice the change from “Mortal” to “Child”, couldn’t help but find it important, **“Do you still desire life? Will you fight for it? Rise above these tides and serve your king once more should the chance arise?”**

“Yes.”

**“Why? Because of your oath to the Crystal’s King? Because of duty?”**

The answer was so childishly simple yet Gladiolus couldn’t stop himself from saying it, “Because Noctis is the ocean, and the ocean is my home. He is my heart-keeper, my friend…” Gladiolus swallowed hard and whispered in a voice more Thors’ than Gladiolus’s, “my **son**.” He blinked up at her, asked sadly, “Would you not do anything for your child? Fight any war? Shoulder any price?”

Leviathan’s fins flared and all the ocean **keened** with a pain far older than Gladiolus and Thors put together, yet so familiar he knew it in an instant. The grief of a parent who had lost a child, the rage of a mother who could not protect what mattered most. As quickly as it had come, it settled, like silt at the bottom of the seas. Still there. Still deep and furious and raw, ready to rise at any moment. Leviathan’s voice was dark with memory and old pain as she opened her jaws and revealed her many great teeth, each twice as long as Gladiolus was tall if not longer, **“I would. I did, once, yet still my children were taken from me. Forgotten and spit upon by the survivors of Ifrit’s rage. Pathetic, traitorous creatures who deserved death far more than my children. My TideSingers, my sailors and my Wave-Riders.”** Fury swelled again and she hissed like boiling hot steam, **“For years I warned of Solheim’s corruption. Their arrogance and pride. Yet when my warnings came to pass and Ifrit was betrayed, when Our Light was taken from us by the greed of those who held their Cunning over everything else, was it them that he struck down first? Was it them that burned and screamed and were shattered against the cliffside? Was it them that Bahamut allowed to be _slaughtered_ until my waves were dyed red before he deigned to intervene?”** She screamed into the waves, fury and memory and old, endless pain. Gladiolus did not need to hear the answer to her questions, nor did she bother to speak them. That was history he was not meant to hear.

She whirled back on him, the wild, dangerous anger of the storms and tides made manifest, slitted eye taking him in like she would swallow him whole in her wrath. As quickly as a summer storm, her anger settled again and her gaze turned assessing, **“Yet you are different. Your soul belongs not to the children of Solheim’s scattered bones. You do not fight for oath and prophecy, but for home and child. You do not call to Steel and War but to Oceans unknown. You … you are different, Child, and that intrigues me.”**

She snapped her teeth together, a crack of waves shattering stone, **“I will keep you. Too long has this world gone without a Child of Tides. Too long has Bahamut hidden away from Our Star, indolent from overconfidence in his prophecies and muzzling any Blessing but his own. I will name you, and you will be my TideSinger, the first of my children after far too long. I will heal your broken body and grant you my Blessing, and in exchange,”** her maw curled into something that might have been smile, cruel and cold as icebergs lurking beneath the waves, smug as a predator scenting prey, **“in exchange, you will guard your son. You will protect him, and raise him, and together you will _shatter_ Bahamut’s precious prophecy into a thousand pieces and scatter its bones amid my waves. Your wrath will reach to the heavens and shake the Draconian loose from his throne of prophecy and steel and pride so that when dawn rises, it will be on a day he has neither foreseen nor can control.”**

Her coils were very close now, filling his world and blocking out everything else from view but her greedy, wild, possessive eye, **“Well, Child? Do we have an accord?”**

Gladiolus understood maybe half of that, and Thors even less. But he did understand that he was being offered a second chance to be with Noctis, a chance to protect him from something older and more terrible than any Niflheim assassin. He was being given a chance to see his son once more … and to walk with the blessing of the ocean that had always been his first and last home.

“Yes.”

A thrumming howl of victory that shook the waters and turned them to towering, churning waves, then a darkly smug, **“Then tell me your first name, Child. The one you wore when you were a viking and a warrior.”**

Gladiolus took another lungful of water-yet-air, and it was Thors’ voice and Thors alone that answered, “Thors. My name was Thors.”

Leviathan uncoiled, swirled around him once, twice, thrice in a spinning mass of scales and color and teeth before she came to a stop in front of him and spread her fins in the gloom like swaths of starlight, **“Then hear me, oceans of Our Star, pay heed, creatures of all my waters! From the songs of the seas to the babble of the mountain streams will my words be heard and my proclamation remembered! This day I claim a new child, this hour I name Gladiolus Amicitia, Shield-sworn of the Chosen King, to be _mine_! No more is he the blood of Solheim’s bones and a child of Bahamut’s reckonings, from this day forth and until the end of Our Star, he is Thors TideSinger, Wave-Rider and Siren-Child, Beloved of my Seas and Wrath of my Tides!”**

The water around him felt like it was burning, it seeped into his skin, flooded his lungs like it should have earlier but hadn’t. It sank into his bones and burned _pictures-knowing-intent-power_ into his mind and soul and voice. For a moment Gladiolus was _old-young-lost-found-alive-dead-memory-forgotten_. Magic tore its way into his veins, different from the kind Regis had given him, colder and wilder and deeper, like the tides and the rushing rivers rather than stone and old forests. It pushed against his marrow and coiled possessively in his chest and burned-burned-burned with the kind of blazing pain only the coldest of icy seas could give.

In the depths of the ocean, there was none but the laughing Hydraean to hear Gladiolus scream as his mind folded in on itself with images of-.

_Sailing. Wooden planking under his feet and sturdy rope in his hands as the sail filled with the wind and the salt water splashed his lips and face. A look to the side, a joyous greeting to the massive, beautiful silver-blue form just beneath the waves. A crash of water as Beloved Tide-Mother emerged from the waves, her great green-gold eye watching them with possessive fondness, her voice echoing in their minds in greeting before she plunged beneath the waters again, her coils seemingly endless, scales reflecting the sun like the finest jewels before she disappeared out of sight. But not out of mind._

_Crying, for joy or for terror, none could know nor hear as he stood on the edge of the cliffs and watched the seas rage-rage-rage beneath Beloved Tide-Mother’s wrathful songs. Crashing against rocks and reaching for the Fulgarian’s storm clouds in fury and playful challenge both, for Leviathan was nothing if not wild and untamable even in her emotions. Singing along with the fury of the oceans, feeling the power fill his veins with power-intent-knowing-will that made Leviathan’s children as untouchable and untamable as the seas they sailed without fear while others still clung to their rocks and their shores, never daring to venture out beyond the most shallow of shoals for the terror of meeting their end beneath the tides._

_Full moon over the endless black expanse of the waves. The chafe of ropes on his wrists and feet as his captors restlessly slept, fearful of the repercussion of trying to catch one of Leviathan’s children. They feared her reprisal._

_They should have feared him more. For what mother does not give her children the tools to defend themselves?_

_After all, her children were known as TideSingers for a reason._

_Singing. Soft and lilting, the barest whisper of words beneath the silver moon, the glint of too-sharp, inhuman teeth as the hapless night watch_ **_listened_ ** _and came closer. Listened and obeyed and cut loose the ropes with glazed eyes and smitten ears._

_Dragging him beneath the black water in fury and vengeance and glee, without fear of the black waves swallowing him up. The waters were a TideSinger’s home, not their grave, what did he have to fear? But these? These pirates and slanderers, pillagers who thought they could take an ocean’s child as a slave? They needed air of the sky much, much more than a TideSinger did._

_They should have thought of that before daring to make an enemy of the waves._

* * *

The world twisted clear again, shook him free of the memories-knowledge that Leviathan had pushed inside him so that he might survive her Blessing and understand his new power. He caught a glimpse of her great, gleeful eye before the waves around him **pushed** and he was surging up-up-up toward the light and life and open air. Leviathan’s words followed after him, dark and smug and protective as she roared one final time, **“Go forth, Thors TideSinger, and _destroy_ the shackles fate would put upon your child and king!”** Her laughter thrummed in his ears like a heartbeat and a scream all in one, rattled in his blood and made him gasp-.

Air. Real air. Jungle air tainted with the stench of burned-frozen-seared flesh and earth and metal. Gladiolus scrabbled against the hands pressing against his _tender-new-unmarked-untanned-ow_ skin, flinched at the startled scream one of the strangers _touching-him-get-away-get-away_ gave as they both reeled back in shock. Everything felt too raw, too new, too painfully real and sharp after the soft, cold darkness of the waves.

Then his brain caught up with his eyes and he whispered hoarsely, “Your Majesty? … Luna?”

Queen Sylva knelt near him, her skin almost white with shock and her hands still gleaming with Oracle magic. She finally choked out, “By the Astrals…” Luna stared at him like he was a ghost, or a daemon, or something unknowable, then suddenly flung herself forward with a sob and hugged him tight.

Gladiolus … really didn’t want to know what those magic flasks had done to his body, did he?

He carefully did not look in the direction of the charred armor that had once been General Glauca. No, no he **really** didn’t want to know what those flasks had done to him —didn’t want to see what had happened to the man in hard armor and know that anything done to Gladiolus’s body was probably worse—.

He gently patted her hair a few times, then pushed her away and forced himself to his feet. He felt … good. Too good. Unnaturally good. All the fatigue and pain from his injuries prior to his fighting General Glauca were gone, he felt as strong and fresh as when he’d first gotten out of bed —stronger, even, there was new magic under his skin that pushed and pulled and whispered of _tides-blood-fury-power_ in a way that made him feel … oddly high—. He pushed the oddity down, pushed away the implications it carried and stared at the Oracle line, who were all staring back. Ravus looked confused and relieved, Luna looked … scared. Scared and confused but so very, very happy that he was alive. Queen Sylva looked **terrified** of him, wild-eyed and wary of the boy who should be dead but wasn’t, and Gladiolus did not have the time or words to reassure her.

Instead, he let Thors guide his thoughts and gestured toward the jungle, kept his gaze on Queen Sylva and tried to radiate calm and sincerity as he emphasized, “We can talk later, right now we need to leave before someone comes looking for Glauca.”

Queen Sylva nodded shakily, her expression smoothing over into something pointedly neutral as she bundled up her children and Gladiolus retrieved the pack he’d shoved at Ravus what already felt like a lifetime ago.

The smoke of the Manor faded behind them as they fled into the jungle, Gladiolus in the lead without even thinking about it. They walked until nightfall, Gladiolus leading them using some new-yet-old instinct that tugged him on towards water —all water came from the sea, and he was an Ocean Child, he could feel the location of the nearest open water as effortlessly as his own heartbeat—.

They stopped on a Haven, huddled together without a fire or a tent, their only shelter the blankets Gladiolus had managed to stuff in his pack alongside food and water. Luna and Ravus sobbed into their mother’s shoulders, shaking from grief and exhaustion and the fear that had spurred them on this far but now dragged down their bones. Gladiolus realized somewhere in between keeping watch and studying his reflection in the water —the higher the moon rose, the more his eyes turned from amber to liquid silver, it scared him— and listening to Queen Sylva murmur comforts to her children that, as a child, **he** should be crying too.

He was eleven, younger than Luna, he had just seen war and been left behind by Regis —even if by Gladiolus’s choice—, he had just come as close to death as anyone could come without actually passing on. Now there was foreign magic in his veins, turning his eyes silver and tugging on his throat with unknown songs. Now he was in the middle of the jungle at night with three royals to protect and an army of enemies that might come at any time and…

And he should be crying. He wanted to, somewhere in the back of his head. He could feel the slight burn in his eyes that heralded rare tears, but Gladiolus had never been much of a cryer —how could he when Thors had gone through so much worse, remembered so much worse and yet hadn’t cried— but this was pushing it. But he didn’t cry. Not yet.

He still had a mission to do.

Astrals, he hoped Noctis was safe without him, because Gladiolus couldn’t reach him now, and he had three **other** royals to protect at the moment.

He let them sleep, only dozed lightly off and on when the urge pulled on him, because he was the only one he trusted to keep watch and it would be better to let the others sleep than risk Queen Sylva’s inexperience or Ravus’s and Luna’s immaturity putting them all in danger should they be given the task of watch. The lapping jungle pool of water next to the Haven called to him, hummed and sang in a way that made his bones buzz with it and the world taste like rain.

Gladiolus doubted he would have been able to sleep tonight anyway. Not still slightly high on his new magic as he was —he couldn’t feel Regis’s magic anymore either, Leviathan had ripped it out and replaced it with her own and **oh** , Gladiolus hoped Regis hadn’t been able to feel that—.

The next day, they ate a cold breakfast and kept marching. Sylva asked him what his plan was, Gladiolus flatly asked her what **hers** had been. It had been a safehouse hidden on the manor grounds with an underground tunnel leading out somewhere else. But they were wildly off course now, and both agreed that trying to find the safehouse now would only lead them to trouble.

“When we reach civilization, I will ask for aid. The people will not turn aside or betray an Oracle. They will keep our presence secret.” Queen Sylva said firmly.

Gladiolus stopped and looked at her, Thors’ memories pulling words from him before he could think better of it, “Even when they burn at the stake? When their families are put to the sword and lie gutted on the ground writhing in pain for their silence? Even when their livelihoods are threatened and their homes torn down with their children screaming inside?”

Queen Sylva stared at him, pale faced and horrified, and Gladiolus looked away and focused on his surroundings, not looking at any of them —not daring to look at Ravus and Luna, who had both recoiled from his words like he had struck them—. Finally, Queen Sylva breathed, “Niflheim would not dare to go that far.”

“Just like they wouldn’t dare to invade Fenestala Manor? To kill you?” Gladiolus could still feel the phoenix down in his hands during that moment, that second where he had pushed it against her chest and seen how he had been almost too late to save her, so late that she was still injured after her revival. Gladiolus shook his head and felt … old —too old, he felt too much like Thors and not in the good ways, he wanted to go home … he wanted to see his son and his parents and his baby sister—, “Even if they didn’t go that far … the gunships flew right over Tenebrae. People must have seen them.” He could sense half a protest on Queen Sylva’s lips and asked softly, “Why didn’t your watchmen warn of the incoming invasion?”

Silence smothered them for what felt like a long time. Gladiolus twitched with tired impatience, but forced himself to not just turn and walk away into the jungle. He was worried sick over Noctis and Regis, but Queen Sylva and her children had just lost their entire country, their home. Of course they weren’t … ready. Thinking. They weren’t like him, they didn’t have Thors’ memories whispering the dark truths of humanity, didn’t have Leviathan’s Blessing humming in their blood to hiss over the untrustworthiness of Landers.

They were the beloved line of Oracles, it had probably never occurred to them just how far humans would go for a little coin. A little power. A few sweet promises that fed into the well of greed.

Queen Sylva finally took a shaking breath, “So what is your plan then?” _Since you seem to know more about this situation than I._

Gladiolus mulled over this answer then orientated himself a little to the right, toward the deep pulse of the tides, “I’m going to get you to Lucis. King Regis and Noctis will have returned by the time we get there, and he will give you asylum from Niflheim.”

“ **How**?” Blurted Ravus, “We’re across the ocean! You can’t even be sure they made it out alive themselves!”

Gladiolus glanced back at Ravus, tried not to feel hurt when the boy flinched from his gaze, “They made it out alive,” Leviathan would not have tasked him with defending Noctis if Noctis had died, and if Regis had been killed, Noctis would have followed, “and you let me worry about getting across the ocean.” He shifted his gaze up to Queen Sylva, “Your Majesty, unless you have a better plan than putting innocent people and your children at further risk, I suggest you follow my lead.” His voice was too young for his words —Thors’ words, impossibly calm and unflappable—, but his tone was just as calm and sure of himself as Thors’ had ever been.

“You’re just a child,” murmured Queen Sylva with sad eyes, not a reproof or a doubt but a plea. _You’re too young to know of these things. To have to lead. You’re just a child. Why must you take such a burden when I cannot?_

“I am the Chosen King’s Shield,” Gladiolus retorted softly. _I never had much of a choice_ ** _but_** _to know these things. I am Gladiolus and Thors and Shield and TideSinger._

_Right now, I’m the only one you can trust._

Queen Sylva closed her eyes briefly and murmured something that sounded like a prayer for forgiveness, then tipped her head in submission, “We will follow where you lead.”

Gladiolus nodded, then turned and led them into the jungle, away from the nearest Tenebraen city, and ever closer to the sea.

* * *

Queen Sylva had never feared the Astrals before. Respected them, yes. Sworn to uphold her duty to them, yes. Studied the cosmology and the ancient texts, yes. All her life in fact. But she had never truly understood the terror inherent in the tales of the Astrals and their Trials before. In the gripping fear and dread that came from witnessing what happened when they reached down and **changed** someone with their Blessings. But perhaps more terrifying, especially to the mother in her, was the gradual realization that Gladiolus Amicitia had not so much been changed by the Leviathan’s sudden and unexpected —unasked for, but not unwelcome— Blessing as their current circumstances had just … forced him to stop hiding himself.

Gladiolus Amicitia was eleven years old. She had heard her children talk much about him during the Lucis Caelums’ stay, especially from Ravus over how Gladiolus was too smart and serious for his age, how he seemed **too old** sometimes. Queen Sylva had assumed Ravus was just a bit jealous of the boy who was clearly a prodigy. But now-.

Now she saw that Ravus and Luna had been right. Gladiolus **was** too old. Too old, too jaded, too wise. He had never walked in Tenebrae’s deep jungles, yet he navigated them without hesitation, always making for some destination Sylva could not sense and only detouring to lead them to water or safety every night. He had never seen war, yet he had fought and bested General Glauca of Niflheim and more than a few MT units before that —even if it nearly cost him his life, especially because it nearly cost him that, what child was ready and willing to die for their oaths?—. He had surely lived a sheltered, if trained, upbringing all his life, and yet he had spoken with such surety of what Niflheim might do to Sylva’s people to find her. Had pointed out the silence of the watchmen with dark eyes that said “traitors” rather than “dead”.

She realized, a week into their furtive trek through the jungle, that Gladiolus was not just Blessed unexpectedly by the Hydraean —Blessed with eyes that gleamed silver in the moonlight and a sense for water and more powers besides—. Gladiolus was one of Those Who Walk Twice. A soul so strong he walked the world again after his first death, a soul so stubborn that he remembered the previous life. A previous life that must have been stained in blood and war.

She had never doubted that the stories were true, but Those Who Walk Twice were so rare throughout history that she had never dreamed of meeting one herself. Had never imagined what it was like to see them as a child, already too old for their skin, too wise for their years. If the situation had not been so dire, she might have questioned Gladiolus about it, the previous life clearly guiding his decisions and his steps.

As it was, she held her silence and felt … pity for his parents. She could not imagine what it must be like, to look into the eyes of a beloved child and realize that there was a ghost looking back.

They arrived on the coast two weeks after the attack on Fenestala Manor. The coast was closer than their travel time implied, but Gladiolus had not allowed them near roads or civilization, and hiking through the winding animal trails of the jungle on foot in garb not suited for such tasks made for a longer journey. Sylva breathed in the ocean air, kept watch as Gladiolus disappeared from their hiding place to go down to the small fishing town she could see in the near distance. He returned as the sun began to set with clothes bundled under one arm, a new short sword slung over his shoulder to replace the one he had lost fighting Glauca, and a backpack of supplies in the other to complement the knapsack that had been providing their food the last two weeks. Somehow, she doubted any of the items in his arms had been legally purchased. At the moment, she couldn’t quite bring herself to care.

He pushed the clothes on them, insisted they change into the nondescript, practical clothing he had brought. When they were done, Sylva said nothing as he shoved their old clothes into his depleted knapsack with little care for preserving what was left of the once-fine silks and weaves. Gladiolus nodded to himself, a warrior-hunter in an eleven year old body, and murmured, “I found us a boat that will get us to Lucis. Come on. We need to leave before the tide changes.”

Ravus swallowed hard as they followed him down the empty beaches, “Now? What captain is going to take four strangers out in the middle of the night, no questions asked? How are we supposed to pay for passage?”

“We’re not paying for passage and there is no captain,” Gladiolus replied firmly, “now hurry and keep silent until we’re well away.”

He led them to the docks were an array of ships were kept. Most of them simple fishing vessels, not meant for long distance travel, many of them mechanized. A few were big enough that she thought they might suit, but Gladiolus bypassed them all. He led them instead to a wooden ship, not as small as a fishing boat, but certainly not big enough to inspire much confidence. Luna gasped softly as Gladiolus herded them on board and then began to untie it from the pier, “We’re stealing it? Mother, Mother, we can’t! Stealing is wrong!”

Sylva hid her own misgivings as she hushed Luna, “I’m afraid that just this once needs must, Lunafreya. Now hush.”

Luna frowned glanced at her brother, who gestured at Sylva’s earrings, “Couldn’t we at least leave some of our jewelry to pay for it, Mother?”

Gladiolus jumped on board with barely a sound, his eyes shifting eerily between amber and silver as the moon began to creep over the horizon, “No. Nothing that can be traced directly to us. A boat theft could be anyone. Clothes and food could have been stolen by anyone. But jewelry from the royal family will just make this town a **target** of Niflheim, and then they’ll know to look for a boat rather search for a car or watch the ferries.”

Ravus still protested softly as Gladiolus bustled around the ship, singlehandedly readying it for sail and steering it out to sea, “We are not thieves! We are royalty, and these are our people!”

“Then they won’t mind you doing what is necessary to survive.”

“Gladiolus-!”

Gladiolus whirled on Ravus, his eyes sparking silver, and Sylva could have sworn for a moment he teeth were needle sharp, “ **No** , Ravus. This isn’t a fairy tale journey where the exiled royals are aided every step of the way by kind people, and can get away with announcing themselves to the hills without being caught. Tenebrae has **fallen** , Niflheim’s only chance to control this territory without sparking a worldwide riot is to **lie** about what happened two weeks ago. If it was just Queen Sylva they had killed, they could take you and Luna into captivity and claim that a third party killed her and that Niflheim was protecting you. But that didn’t happen. All three of you are missing, so it is **very** likely that they’ve declared you **dead** , either by accident or by the machinations of an unspecified third party, or even by Lucis. If we make it to Lucis and sanctuary, all of you will be able to denounce the Empire for what really happened that day and they can’t have that.”

He took a deep breath as he pulled on ropes and worked with various mechanisms Sylva did not know. The sail filled with a soft thump and they began pulling through the waves as Gladiolus finished, “They can’t have that. They’ve failed to capture you and Luna, which means their only alternative is to make sure no one ever knows the truth of what happened at Fenestala Manor. They will **kill you** , do you understand? If they find us through any means, they will kill us all to keep their cover. You’re not royalty right now, we’re **all** targets.”

Ravus shook and Luna whimpered, Sylva pulled them close to her with a gentle hum and leveled a stern look at Gladiolus, “You have made your point.” _They are only children. As you should be._ Gladiolus eyed her, then his shoulders slumped and he looked away, went back to working the ship. They sailed in silence for what felt like a long time. Long enough that Sylva gently coaxed her children into the single cabin on the vessel. She held them as they cried themselves to sleep, then pulled her own fraying edges back together to go back on deck.

She paused in the shadows of the door when she saw Gladiolus. He was slumped over by the steering mechanism of the ship, his face in his hands and his shoulders shaking. Not enough to be crying, but enough that he looked suddenly very fragile. _He’s only eleven,_ she remembered for the hundredth time, but this time it came with the realization that, for all he was using the maturity and wisdom of a past life to aid their escape, he was still a **child**. Physically, emotionally, and no doubt in some places mentally, at least the places his past life didn’t touch. He was a child who had seen a violent coup take place, who was separated from his king and his best friend, who had been leading and guarding a trio of royals that were not his own for two weeks through the jungle. Barely sleeping as he kept watch, pushing on-on-on for fear of being caught. That was a strain on anyone, Sylva included. He had probably been suppressing it, putting off thinking about it because he had a duty and none of his current companions had any **real** notion of how to survive this scenario.

Astrals, this boy had almost **died** a second time. Had only survived because Leviathan had suddenly Blessed him, dragged him back to life and health with a riptide of magic that had knocked the wind out of Sylva just by being too close to Gladiolus when it happened.

They’d been relying on him, but they had also been so wary of him. For his Blessing, for his calm and grim logic that was so unnatural for his age.

_He’s still just a boy. No matter what knowledge still lies in his head from another lifetime._ And Sylva was a mother, even if she was not Gladiolus’s. She was an Oracle, for all she was now without a kingdom.

She crossed the distance between them and laid a hand on his shoulder. Gladiolus jolted under her hand, surprised by her touch, sniffed loudly and shook himself as he straightened up, “I can’t stay awake all night watching the tiller, so I’m going to find some extra rope and lash it in place. We’ll still drift some, but I know where we’re going, I can correct the course. The weather looks clear for miles, so it should be safe to sleep on deck in case anything happens or anyone approaches-.”

“Gladiolus,” she interrupted gently. He paused, eyed her warily, like he expected her to lecture, or to flinch from his now fully silver eyes —they turned color with every moonrise, glinted like moonlight on black waves in a way that was as bewitching as it was eerie—, “It’s alright. We are away from the shore now. You need to rest.”

Gladiolus breathed in, the sound shaky, shook his head, “Someone needs to mind the ship, and none of you know how to sail. I’ll sleep once I’ve lashed the tiller-.”

“Then teach us.” He paused, Sylva lowered herself into a crouch so they were eye level, “On the morrow. Teach us how to sail this ship with you. You have already saved us many times over, let us help you. Please.”

Gladiolus stared at her, shifted his gaze up to the stars instead, “You’re all scared of me.”

“We are grieving, and we are afraid of a great many things right now.”

“I scare you. I’m unnatural.” This was said with bitterness, a tired despair that hurt Sylva’s heart, “I’m eleven years old and I’m the one in charge and its not … normal. **I’m** not normal. Luna is afraid of me for surviving Glauca, Ravus is afraid of me for acting so much older than him. You’re afraid of me because I refuse to let you take charge.”

Sylva decided this was not a conversation for her current position, shifted to sit on the wood of the deck instead, “You are something quite rare, in a situation that is very frightening. I have treated you unfairly because of it, and for that I am so very **sorry** , Gladiolus. I cannot imagine what it is like, to be in your place, to be one of Those Who Walk Twice and be forced to actively pull on those memories to survive rather than be the child your body marks you as. But you have saved me, saved my children, and you continue to do so, and for that I am in your debt.”

Gladiolus was staring at her again with wide eyes, “What is that?” She tilted her head and he rasped, “That title you just said. What is it?”

“Those Who Walk Twice?” He nodded and she folded her hands in her lap to hide her own confusion, “It is what you are, is it not? A soul that lived and died once before, but was strong enough to walk again in a new lifetime?”

He stared at her like she had just grown fins, “…There’s … there’s a term for it?” He sounded genuinely breathless, “Are there others who-. Are there others like me?”

Sylva sat back, something cold settling in her bones, “You did not know.” He shook his head, “Your parents never told you? King Regis never told you?” Another shake of the head and Sylva sighed heavily. This was a mess for safe places and blood parents, not for a small boat sailing ever farther into the ocean and a displaced Oracle Queen. Yet here she was, and apparently now was the time, “Those Who Walk Twice. It is an ancient term, so old there is no single modern word to adequately explain it. Some use reincarnation, but that implies a reoccurring and larger cycle. This is not. Those Who Walk Twice are exceptionally rare in history, but there are recorded cases of them. They are souls who are immensely strong, in will, in passion, in life. So much so that eventually, after their first lifetime, they wake up once more in new bodies, new lives, new times, but with at least partial memories of their first lifetime. They only ever walk twice, for even the strongest soul cannot defy death to walk a third time.”

Gladiolus had busied himself tying down the tiller while she spoke, but now he stared off at the waves with too still hands and shaky breathing, “There have been … others like me.”

“Yes. One of the Oracles was, in fact, one such soul. Which is why we Oracles know the legends are true and not merely elaborate myths like much of the world believes. Her name was Abelia, she was my great grandmother and in her first life she was a Galahdian, of the clan of Ulric. She could not remember how she died, but she did recall many feats of strength and bravery that she performed alongside Crepera Lucis Caelum.” A glance her way, surprised and questioning and she smiled, “Yes, the famed Rogue Queen. It is from Abelia’s accounts that we know as much of Crepera as we do, though the Fleuret line at the time chose to keep the ultimate source of their knowledge a secret, as they did not want to burden Abelia with the fame and skepticism that would come from being known as one of Those Who Walk Twice.”

Gladiolus was stubbornly not looking at her again, but she could hear his breath hitching faintly, “Are there … any now?”

Sylva felt her heart ache for yet another reason as she murmured, “I am sorry. But there are no known others currently still alive. Abelia died many years ago, and she was the last one I knew of … until I met you.”

“But … there were others. There have been others, with … with memories. And dreams. And hands too small and a voice that’s wrong and the feel of- of-. There were others who remembered being-.” He was gasping openly now, his entire body trembling so hard that if he had been standing, she feared he would have fallen over entirely. He looked up at her, eyes literally glowing a soft silver that highlighted the contours of his young face and the tears pouring down his cheeks and Sylva had barely a moment to open her arms on a mother’s instinct before Gladiolus crumbled into her grip, his face buried in her stolen shirt, his entire body shaking from the force of his sobs as he … broke. Not from seeing a bloody coup, not from being separated from his king and his best friend in a foreign land, not from almost dying saving the lives of Sylva and her children.

But from being told that he was not alone. That there had been others like him, others who had lived through whatever strange, in-between existence he experienced as a boy with scattered memories of a man. That he was not … an anomaly. Not insane or cursed or whatever other fear had lurked in the shadows of his mind. He was rare, but not the only one. There had been others like him, others who would have understood, others who knew what he was **now** even if they could not possibly understand what he was going through.

Sylva wrapped her arms tight around him, pressed her lips to his hair and hummed a gentle lullaby as she rocked him back and forth. Her magic slithered out from her skin, like starlight and soft gold fire, wrapped around Gladiolus like a blanket, a silent comfort to him that masked her **anger**. Everything they had faced, everything Gladiolus had withstood these past two weeks —almost **dying** , alive only because he had been Blessed by the Hydraean— and **this** was the final thing that broke him. Something he should have known for years, something he should have been told the moment he was mature enough to understand and it was clear that he was one of Those Who Walk Twice.

The Oracles were not like the Lucis Caelums. They were quick to anger, but slow to genuinely rage. Slow to unleash their magic in a quest for blood rather than healing. It was very, very difficult to drive an Oracle to a true rage that pulled their magic out of their skin and unleashed the terror that came when healing was twisted for death. Sylva had not even felt it during their flight from their home and all that had happened, too deep in shock and grief to fall into rage that would do her no good.

But this…

This **infuriated her**.

_Astrals grant me mercy,_ she breathed silently into Gladiolus’s hair as he sobbed and wailed like the child he was **supposed** to be, _for if we actually survive to gain sanctuary on Lucian shores, I do not think I will have any of my own to spare for this boy’s parents. Or King Regis._ Sylva exhaled the last of her plea, wrapped her arms and magic more tightly around Gladiolus, sang soft old lullabies in the hopes of lulling him into the sleep he so desperately needed.

She did not notice the cabin door creak softly shut behind Ravus and Luna as they slipped back to the bed after having witnessed the entire thing.

* * *

Sailing from Tenebrae to Lucis in a small, sail-powered boat was no easy or short feat. The trip itself took two weeks in a large motor powered ship, but in this little ship so much smaller and reliant on the favor of the wind and weather, it took much longer. They were also delayed by the course corrections Gladiolus had to make every morning, because even with lashing the tiller into place, some drift was inevitable. It was stressful a good deal of the time but it was also … invigorating. Gladiolus was **at sea** , sailing properly for the first time in this lifetime with a wooden deck under his feet and the familiar creak of wood and rope and sail singing in his ears as soothingly as any song.

If they all survived this, Gladiolus hoped and prayed that his father would let him keep this vessel —or commission a new one, a proper wolfship—, because this … this was everything Thors remembered and more. This was **life** in a way nothing in Insomnia could touch, and now that he had experienced it for himself rather than just in memory, he didn’t think he would survive completely giving it up. But that was if they survived the trip back. So far the Tide-Mother had favored them with fair winds and smooth waves, but the ocean was fickle, and Gladiolus kept a wary eye out for storms even as he kept them on course for the Lucian continent via the stars and the currents and the inexplicable sense he had now for the waters and where it met the land.

He also had help.

After that first night on the boat, where Queen Sylva had told him about Those Who Walk Twice —a term for people like him, the **existence** of people like him even if none were known to be alive today—, the three royals had … changed their attitudes toward him. Queen Sylva —“Call me Sylva, I do believe you’ve more than earned the right”— treated him like both a warrior and a son, respecting his expertise while also managing to comfort him when he woke up swallowing screams from nightmares of _burning-freezing-spasming-falling._ Luna and Ravus were … not quite back to treating him like before Tenebrae’s fall, because nothing would ever be quite like it was before that, but they were … less afraid. They sought out his company and asked him questions. Looked him in the eyes where before they had flinched away.

He taught the three of them how to sail. How to manage the tiller, what the ropes did, how to judge whether the sail was too-full or not full enough. He lay on the deck between Ravus and Luna at night and pointed out the stars and spoke of how they served ever as guides for the children of the sea. He gently lowered Luna’s hand into the cold currents of the waves and asked if she could **feel** them. The flow of the water and its intent as it journeyed. Her expression when she looked up at him, her magic tangling gently with the passive magic in the waves in such a way she could feel it, made his heart feel full. She could not feel it as deeply as he could, but … it was there.

He discovered that Ravus had a natural knack for the sails and the winds, a sense for where wind met fabric and rope bridged the gaps between them. That Ravus had a natural instinct for the way the wind changed and Gladiolus took great delight in honing it. In showing him how to manage the sail and how to know which way the wind was turning. Sylva had no natural talent for any of the many tasks involved in sailing, but she was patient, a good listener, and had a steady hand that he appreciated.

Gladiolus’s teachings were a welcome distraction from grief for all of them, and something in Gladiolus felt … loose and relaxed for the first time in this entire lifetime at being able to openly share the parts of himself that were Thors. He could talk about what he knew without being questioned over how he knew it, and Luna sometimes curled up against his shoulder in the quiet moments and asked him to tell her about his previous life and what it was like. He told her about sailing, mostly. Traveling to new places and seeing strange new things. He did not talk about the wars Thors had fought, or how he had died, but … it was nice. Talking about sailing, and about the snowy land he had called home —even though he could no longer remember its name—. About inane things like milking and blacksmithing and building a home with his own two hands for-.

For his family.

He didn’t tell them about his family. Not outside the vaguest mentions. Didn’t want to explain to children that he had once **had** children. Had once had a beautiful, headstrong daughter and a vibrant, stubborn, wonderful son. He suspected that Sylva understood what he wasn’t saying, that she knew from the way he treated Ravus and Luna that Thors had been a father. He was grateful that she never asked him about it.

They were three weeks out on the ocean when Gladiolus started seriously rationing their supplies. He had been rationing it already, but now he narrowed it further and supplemented what was missing by fishing. He taught Luna, Sylva, and Ravus how to fish with lines over the side in the slower moments, and accidentally made all three of them panic when he simply slipped over the side at one point to fish for them with his bare hands like the instincts of Leviathan’s Blessing told him he could. He climbed back onto the boat with a fistful of fish, riding high on the sensation of being able to cut through the water as effortlessly as if he’d had fins only to find Ravus white-faced, Luna crying, and Sylva pacing with white lips. After that, he made sure to tie a rope around his waist before diving, and to come up regularly for air —even though he didn’t need it, he was an Ocean’s Child, water was as easy for him to breathe as air—.

Almost four weeks on the ocean and Gladiolus felt the wind change. The waves rumbled with suppressed energy and he tasted rain on the wind. Ravus grew uneasy, his sense for the wind warning him of things he didn’t yet know to identify, and Gladiolus made them all help him prepare for a storm.

The storm hit just as Gladiolus locked them all in the cabin, and it took more willpower than he expected not to go rushing back out into the teeth of the storm as it rattled and howled and called to him. Called to his blood as a fellow TideSinger and Ocean Child. The boat lurched and bounded through the waves, aimless and unmoored, and Gladiolus’s more sane halves feared that it would be tipped sideways at any moment without someone at the tiller, but Sylva refused to let him out the door into the storm, so all he could do was close his eyes and pray and **sing** when the new magic in his blood grew too strong and laughed too loud at the near death hounding them from every side.

Sylva would never tell him just how terrifying he had seemed in those moments, eyes unfocused at the ceiling and burning silver despite it being midday, singing in the language he had been teaching them off and on, too fast and rolling for her to understand, magic coiling and laughing around them as it danced to the heartbeat of the storm outside.

The storm passed quickly, and Gladiolus crumbled to the floor, drained by the magic that had stirred him to a near-frenzy.

He woke up to find Ravus, Luna, and Sylva working together to carefully steer the boat toward the shoreline that was now much closer than it had been before. Gladiolus let them hug and fuss at him for a while before taking charge and getting his bearings.

The storm had blown them very off course, but also much closer to land. He could see the Rock of Ravatogh in the near distance, no more than perhaps a half-hour steady sailing away. Which was good, because the storm had also battered their little ship far too much, he could feel her groaning softly in pain under his feet as they unfurled the sail and made for the shore, and something in his heart grieved as he touched a hand to the mast in sympathy for her pain. She had been a good little ship.

They landed on an unmarked beach, and after unloading all their supplies, Gladiolus gently pressed his forehead against the ship’s bow and then pushed her into the waves. A wave of his hand and a pulse of command and the waves rose up to swallow her whole. A poor grave for a ship that had saved them, but he could not risk a fire and he knew that no one would ever come to retrieve and repair her. Luna sniffled a little as they all watched it sink into the water before turning and wobbling their way up the beach, their sea legs unsteady on solid ground.

And so they started walking again. Through the day and evenings, hiding on Havens if they could find them, keeping watch when they could not —he had taught the three how to keep watch on the ship, and it was a relief to be able to sleep partway through the night now—. They avoided roads where they could, because the Rock of Ravatogh was in Imperial captured territory and they couldn’t afford to be caught on the home stretch. The isolation was getting to the three royals, and so about two more weeks into their steady trek, they cautiously made their way into a small town. They had no gil to pay for either a hotel or the diner, but their supplies had finally run out and scavenging off the wilderness wasn’t feasible all the time.

Sylva went inside the diner and came out with a relieved expression. The three children followed her back inside and Gladiolus saw the look of pity that flashed over the tipster’s face as he let them eat the cheapest thing off the menu in exchange for dishwashing and odd jobs. The hotel manager was similarly kind, letting them stay in a room in exchange for work. Ravus bitterly muttered how as royalty they should be given accommodation, Gladiolus quietly asked him what he was royalty **of**. Neither Luna or Ravus would look at him for the rest of the day.

Early in the morning, while the others still slept, Gladiolus left a note and went back to the diner. The tipster was reluctant to give him a Hunt poster, but Gladiolus looked older than his actual eleven years and he was able to bluff his way as a scrawny fourteen and take it. He returned mid afternoon, tired and bloody, to a frantic Sylva, Luna, and Ravus with three monster horns slung over his back and his pack stuffed with raw meat wrapped in leaves. The tipster gave him the gil, eyed his pack with a knowing look, and abruptly offered to trade the raw meat in Gladiolus’s pack for canned goods and a can opener. Gladiolus accepted the trade and they continued on their way.

“Why did he call us Galahdian?” Luna asked a few hours later in their trek.

Gladiolus searched his memory, “Galahd was one of Lucis’s territories. It fell a few years ago and many of the natives fled here to the mainland. Regis set up a sector for them to live in and many are employed as Kingsglaive now but … I suspect a lot of them are still wandering the mainland without a home or work outside of Hunts.”

“So the Empire takes everyone’s homes,” Ravus muttered bitterly.

Gladiolus shrugged, “That’s war. You either keep your home and gain new land or you lose everything.”

Ravus took a deep breath, exhaled softly, “It’s not right. It’s not **right**.” Gladiolus glanced at the older boy and felt the part of him that was Thors sigh sadly at the burning light in his eyes. Sylva said nothing when Gladiolus haggled some of the monster parts he had collected in exchange for a light sword at their next inhabited stop to give to Ravus. It was better to have more than just him and Sylva armed anyway.

Three months after the Fall of Tenebrae, the four of them had stopped in another small diner for a rare proper meal using the gil Ravus and Gladiolus had gained from Hunts when they heard word of Kingsglaive activity just a few miles away. Rumor said they’d been seen possibly setting up a forward base, perhaps with the intent to strike at the nearby Niflheim presence. They all exchanged long looks before Ravus carefully asked where the activity had been seen.

Then they started walking again.

* * *

Nyx chewed the piece of ration he’d snitched from Libertus’s pack idly as he settled further on his haunches.

Keeping watch was so boring. But that was the front line for you. Endless minutes of boring inaction punctuated by total chaos and bloodshed. Still, he would have thought he’d feel more alert than this. This was the furthest they’d ever pushed Niflheim back. Another aggressive, hit and run sabotage campaign from the Marshal paying off with its usual brutal flare.

He wondered what the Captain would have thought of it, the irony of them making more progress in the two months since Cor the Immortal took over than in all the years Captain had been fighting and bleeding and grouching alongside them. Then he shut that thought down, because wondering about that led to wondering about why Captain had disappeared three months ago and there was no point in thinking about something for which there were no leads or hope. The Captain was still listed MIA, so there was a … thin possibility he would return someday, but that would mean he’d been captured.

Knowing Captain, Nyx thought the man would prefer to be dead than three months a prisoner of the Nifs.

Something in the air changed, the sensation of a predator watching him from the undergrowth and Nyx kept his shoulders relaxed even as he shifted his heels under him for a better jump and carefully rested one hand on a kukri hilt. He looked around casually, refused to tense up when he saw nothing but the feeling of being watched by a greater predator increased. _If it’s another freaking voretooth pack…_

Somewhere to his left, something cracked under the weight of an unseen creature. Nyx stood up, not even pretending to be oblivious as he stared at the wilds outside their temporary base, both hands on his kukri and magic bristling slowly under his skin. He didn’t call out, because it was **probably** just wildlife that was curious about the foreign presences in its territory. Nifs were rarely this stealthy, considering their love of bombing everything from their ships or unleashing waves of clattering MT units. Still.

All the hairs on Nyx’s neck were standing up. He breathed and was inwardly startled to taste ocean salt on his tongue. No- not ocean salt. That was impossible. But … there was the impression of it. The impression of ocean salt and hissing waves, the glitter of sleek serpentine scales in the corner of his eyes when it wasn’t there. He inhaled and felt something inside him quiver, something that screamed with the same warning he’d felt when he’d wandered too far from his parents on the shoreline when he was boy, had splashed too deep into unchecked waters and had almost been snapped up by one of the great Silver Serpents that sometimes lurked there as they migrated.

Then-, a rustle of leaves, a glimpse of a human silhouette in the shadows of the brush. Nyx drew his kukri and raised his voice, sharp and loud —both to be intimidating and to alert the other glaives in the camp that they had company—, “ **Hey**. How about you get out here and introduce yourself rather than lurk? This is a restricted area.” Nothing, Nyx eyed the spot he’d thought he’d seen the silhouette and was disconcerted that he couldn’t see it anymore. No Niflheim soldier was that stealthy in the wilds, that was almost Galahd level skill. A refugee perhaps? Or a Hunter taking a shortcut and surprised to find their base? “If you’re a Hunter,” he called cautiously as more glaives scrambled up the wall behind him to see what he was yelling at, “then come out and say so. You won’t be in trouble as long as you don’t cause any.”

“Nyx?” Libertus breathed in his ear.

“Someone’s out there, might be alone, might have company.”

Tredd twitched on his other side, sniffed the air and muttered, “Why do I smell the ocean?” Oh good that wasn’t Nyx’s senses failing him.

“I have no idea,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth, sensed Libertus shivering faintly out of the corner of his eye, just as alarmed by the eerie aura of an ocean predator nearby as Nyx was. Nyx raised his voice again, “Come out or be considered a hostile!”

There was a moment where nothing happened and then-. A boy. No warning, no sound of undergrowth, he was just **there** , a teenager of maybe fourteen years standing just a few yards away, on the very edge of their perimeter, “I’m not an enemy,” he called in a voice that immediately made Nyx revise his mental estimation from teenager to pre-teen, “are you really Kingsglaive?”

Libertus narrowed his eyes at the boy still half-hidden in the shadows, “Yeah, and you’re trespassing on our perimeter. Identify yourself!” The boy took a few slow steps out of the shadows, hands away from his sides and safely away from the short sword Nyx could see peaking over his shoulder and Nyx hissed softly.

The kid was a mess. Thin as a twig, his wrist bones on display beneath tattered sleeves, his cheeks too hollow to be healthy even if he wasn’t drastically underweight, his clothes filthy from endless travel, and his stance wide and cautious. Skittish. _Either the Nifs are getting more dedicated in their acting,_ Nyx thought, _or this kid is a refugee._ Nyx sheathed his kukri and ignored Libertus’s warning mutter as he jumped down from the wall and approached the kid. The boy watched him with too-sharp, too-old eyes that promised a fight if Nyx tried anything. Nyx leaned down a little so they were closer to eye level, “What’s your name kid, and what are you doing out here?” The boy didn’t look Galahdian. He had no braids and paid no attention to the braids in Nyx’s own hair. But that didn’t mean Nyx’s heart wasn’t already going out to him —Nyx had seen too many Galahdian children in this kid’s position, had seen Crowe in this position, had himself been in this position at one point—.

The boy took a slightly shaky breath, closed his eyes, then opened them and very slowly reached for the harness holding his sword. Unbuckling it and keeping every movement non-threatening, he held the sheathed gladius in the flat of his palms and turned it so that Nyx could see the battered, scorched crest engraved on the sheath, “My name is Gladiolus Amicitia,” said the boy as he looked Nyx in the eyes, “And I would very much like to go home.”

Nyx reared back as if slapped because that- that was impossible. There was no way this kid was the missing —dead, everyone knew he was dead even if he was officially MIA— son of the Shield. The boy had gone missing in **Tenebrae**. That was across the entire ocean, through Niflheim controlled waters and then Niflheim-conquered territory. It couldn’t … really be …

Nyx looked into too-old, too-tired eyes that burned a war-aged amber in a too-thin face and found himself believing anyway. Nyx ran a hand through his hair, ignoring the incredulous mutters of the other glaives on the wall, “You got any proof other than that sheath, kid?”

The boy seemed to think, then hesitantly shook his head, “You wouldn’t know the safe words of my line.” He paused, “If- If I could talk to Cor Leonis, or my father, I could prove it.”

Nyx mentally made peace with the fact that if this kid was **not** who he said he was then Nyx was going to be in **so much trouble** and gestured toward the base, “Gimme the sword and we’ll call up the Marshal. How about that?”

With a grimace the boy turned over his sword and followed Nyx into the base under the incredulous stares of the other glaives. Libertus continued to give Nyx a despairing look as Nyx called up the Marshal using their “important business only” communication line. The Marshal picked up with a curt, “Report.” Because of course he did. Of course he had the number of the emergency communication line memorized or labeled.

Nyx took a deep breath and bid his career goodbye if this went wrong, “There’s a kid here who insists on talking to you, sir. Showed up on the perimeter with a banged up old gladius and a sheath bearing a noble crest. He says-.” Nyx hesitated. Even if the line was supposed to be secure, paranoia made him reluctant to say it, “He’s calling a Code Thunderroc, sir.” Code Thunderroc, the unexpected return of an MIA soldier. Closest he could get without blurting it out.

The Marshal’s voice held a furious growl that made Nyx wince, “What crest.”

“Amicitia crest, sir.”

There was a fragile pause, brittle on the other end and then a subdued, “Put him on the line.”

Nyx passed the phone to the boy, who put the phone to his ear and physically sagged when he heard the Marshal’s voice on the other end, angry as it was. Amber eyes blinked back tears and for the first time the kid looked like an actual kid as he said in a wobbling voice, “Godfather Cor, it’s me. I … I want to go home. Please. I want to see _Minn Konungr_.”

* * *

Cor was terrified. He was scared out of his mind that any moment now he was going to sit up in bed with a pounding heart and realize that everything he was experiencing was just a dream. He was terrified that he was going to finish driving this car, was going to get to the recent Kingsglaive base only to find that something had **happened** and his godson was gone again.

Astrals please. Please. Just this once. He wanted to be awake, he wanted a happy ending. Just once.

He wanted to be able to chase the black bags from beneath Clarus’s eyes, he wanted Juno to stop being a blank-faced statue in public who did not know how to smile. He wanted Iris to stop having to ask him where her big brother was and when he was coming home. He wanted Ignis to stop glaring silently at the wall with red eyes and Noctis to do more than huddle in his room and sob inconsolably.

He wanted Regis to not have to blame himself for the death of his best friend’s son. To not sag under the weight of guilt and grief, for the deep wound between Clarus and Regis to actually heal, not sit and weep despite their best efforts —despite Clarus’s understanding that tragedy happened and Regis had **tried** , despite Regis knowing that there was nothing he could have done against an entire army with a young son to protect—.

Cor wanted to stop being so **angry**. A deep, all-consuming anger that clawed and bit at his gut at all hours, poisoning his dreams and his thoughts and making it so hard to concentrate on his newest duties as the head of the Kingsglaive since Captain Drautos had disappeared.

He wanted his godson back.

Just this once he was allowed to be greedy like that, right?

Cor saw the parking spot approach, the furthest he could go in anything but a military grade truck, and pulled over. He rested his head against the steering wheel for just a minute. Closed his eyes and **prayed**. Then he got out and loped into the wilds. The base wasn’t far now. The emergency line the glaive had used went directly to his phone, and Cor had never been more grateful to be outside Insomnia than when he had heard his godson’s voice through his phone’s speaker. If he had been in Insomnia, the journey would have taken days rather than mere hours and Cor would have had to report to Regis, would have had to get his and Clarus’s hopes up-.

No. He had to see this for himself first.

Supply line constraints necessitated the base being within reasonable distance of the road, so it didn’t take long to see it rise in the distance. A makeshift thing of prefabricated walls bolstered by natural rocks and other features of the wilderness to be something worth calling a base. It didn’t even have buildings yet, might not have any buildings by the time it was torn down to make way for the next advance. But he didn’t care about that.

Cor strode past the glaives at the gate, barely paused to bark his clearance codes at them —they knew who he was, it wasn’t like his face wasn’t famous enough— and finally gave into the urge to run to the command tent. He yanked the flap of the tent open and-.

The boy on the camp chair looked up sharply, hand going to his gladius with the speed of instinct, something wild and sharp in amber eyes before he registered who had just entered and …

Relaxed. Set aside his bowl of soup with shaking hands and swallowed as he stood up and rasped, “ **Godfather**.”

Cor crossed the distance in three strides and pulled Gladiolus tight to his chest. Buried his face in shaggy, filthy brown hair and pretended his cheeks weren’t already wet with tears of relief as his godson —not an apparition, not a fake, not a dream— clung to him in return. Cor could feel the hitch of his lungskept his face pressed against Gladiolus’s head and tried not to feel the boniness of the boy in his arms, the way he didn’t feel nearly as **solid** as he once had.

Gladiolus was alive.

Gladiolus was **alive**.

That was all that mattered right now.

Cor forced himself to let go after what felt like an eternity, adjusted his grip to rest on Gladiolus’s shoulders as he held his godson out at arms length and examined him with a critical eye despite the tears he knew were still slowly tracking down his face. Gladiolus looked back at him, too-tired amber eyes gleaming softly with his relieved, weary smile and something in Cor unwound.

His godson had lost a lot of weight. He wasn’t as bad as escaped prisoners of war Cor had seen, but he wasn’t the happy, pristinely healthy boy that had stowed away to Tenebrae. Cor could see the hollowing of Gladiolus’s cheeks, feel the boniness of shoulders that had only thin, whipcord muscle on them. Gladiolus was dirty from travel and the wilds, his clothes were not any Cor could remember seeing and were ratty and torn in multiple places from fights. His hair was longer, a tangled mess held back by a sloppy ponytail that would probably be a nightmare to untangle when next he had a shower.

But he was alive. That was all that mattered. He was alive, he was **here**.

Cor ignored the way Gladiolus’s eyes, which had always been older than his body, looked positively ancient now. He ignored the way he could feel … **something** under his fingers. Something twisting beneath Gladiolus’s skin like an ocean current or a sea-serpent, something wild and magical that was definitely **not** Regis’s magic. Those would come later. He could worry about those later, because there would **be** a later.

Gladiolus was alive for there to be a later.

Cor pulled him close again, “Don’t. **Ever**. Scare me like that again.” He rasped hoarsely.

“I’m sorry, Godfather,” Gladiolus murmured into Cor’s shirt and Cor ignored the unspoken, _I can’t promise that._

Gladiolus twisted away gently, but let Cor keep a hand on his shoulder as he gestured to a different part of the tent, “I … brought some company?”

Cor looked up sharply, aware for the first time since entering the tent that there were at least three glaives awkwardly trying to give him privacy without actually leaving and three strangers in equally ratty conditions as Gladiolus. Two children, one about twelve, the other maybe sixteen, and a woman, all with pale hair and blue eyes —the boy’s eyes might have been blue and purple, but it was impossible to tell in the tent’s lighting—. The woman stood up with far more poise and grace than any normal refugee and Cor straightened on instinct in response. The woman dipped her head, “You must be Cor Leonis.”

He narrowed his eyes, trying to place why the woman seemed so familiar, “I am.”

The woman smiled, “We owe your godson a debt. He saved our lives a hundred times over, and he has brought us here in search of the sanctuary of Lucis’s king.”

Cor’s grip tightened on Gladiolus’s shoulder on instinct, “And you are?”

Gladiolus actually laughed softly and the woman’s lips turned up in bitter humor as she answered, “I suppose I do not look like myself in this state. I am Sylva Via Fleuret, and these are my two children, Lunafreya and Ravus Nox Fleuret.”

Cor stared. Took a deep breath as he let that earth-shattering revelation settle with the appearance of pale skin and blue eyes and- yes, yes that was the famed Oracle trident leaning inconspicuously against the woman’s camp chair. The trident that belonged only to the line of Oracles. The line Niflheim had wailed far and wide had been murdered by terrorists and anarchists before Niflheim could sweep in and save them. The line that Cor had assumed, along with Regis and Clarus, had been massacred in the same surprise attack that took Gladiolus’s life.

Cor gave up holding onto his shattered dignity, put his head in his hands and laughed to hide the sob in his throat, “Of course he did.” Cor raised his head and stared down at a vaguely sheepish looking Gladiolus, “You. You crossed the ocean. Eleven years old and with three royal refugees in tow and you crossed a **Niflheim controlled ocean** without getting spotted once.”

Gladiolus huffed and Cor thought he saw silver flicker through amber eyes, “Not their ocean. They might muck up the water with their ugly metal ships, but the waves are a lot bigger than them, and **I’m** a much better sailor.”

Queen Sylva —the **missing Oracle queen** — smiled thinly, “That is not all he has done for us. But if you would, I would much rather hold this conversation safely behind Insomnia’s Wall. My children…” her voice faltered for just a moment and Cor could see the strain of a lost kingdom and three month flight weighing on her shoulders, “I believe we **all** could do with a safe rest and a bath.”

Cor nodded, pushed his emotions and incredulity back as he gestured out of the tent, “I have a car parked on the road not far from here, I will personally drive the four of you to Insomnia.” He turned to one of the glaives awkwardly watching the conversation, “Kingsglaive, do you know how to ride a motorcycle?”

The man blinked startled blue eyes and saluted, “Yes, sir.”

“Then round up three more glaives who can ride fast and get the motorbikes out of storage. The Oracle line need an escort back to Insomnia.”

“Yes, sir!” The glaive hurriedly ducked out of the tent with a glance at the other two, who followed him out with soft mutters. Cor nodded to himself and took a deep breath to keep his emotions in check even as he pulled Gladiolus closer to his side. He could cry later. Celebrate later.

He had three lost royals and a godson to bring home.

* * *

Gladiolus shivered gratefully under the hot spray of the shower. Let his sore muscles finally unwind and the steam hide his exhaustion from his godfather, who lurked just on the other side of the open bathroom door, no doubt listening intently for the slightest sound of distress. Logically, Cor should have been with Regis and Gladiolus’s father, talking to Sylva about their living arrangements and her story of everything that had happened and whatever it was she had wanted to talk privately with them about. But Gladiolus didn’t think Cor was operating too much on logic right now and Gladiolus was too relieved to be **home** to care.

With a huff, Gladiolus began scrubbing himself down, letting brown water run down the drain as he enjoyed the luxury of a true shower for the first time in three months —the quick things during their rare nights in a caravan or motel didn’t count, he had always let Luna and Ravus and Sylva take most of the water and had been too tired to really scrub clean—. He tugged the knots out of his hair and rubbed his skin raw and clean. Cor had made it clear he couldn’t see Noctis until Gladiolus had been checked by the doctors and had gotten a thorough shower. The doctors had already done their fussing and poking, clucking over his lost weight and making dire noises of diet plans to get him back up to where he should be, so now all that was left was a shower.

Gladiolus glanced down at himself, faltered.

He hadn’t know he had **that**.

Gladiolus stared down at his body, at the winding, curling mark. It wasn’t a scar, his scars were smaller, newer things he’d accumulated over the three months since Tenebrae’s fall, and any scars from … before that had been healed away, pale skin tanned to match the rest of him over the sailing part of their journey. This was … something else.

They looked like tattoos of fish scales, soft and silver colored, barely visible against his skin, only visible now that he had scrubbed off the last lingering grime and dirt of his journey. The scales wound up from his thighs and across the majority of his torso. They spiraled up in artful, whimsy patterns, wound around his collarbone before they disappeared from his sight on his neck. He traced them visually, raised the one arm and hand that they spiraled down where they settled in the palm of his hand.

The hand that had held the pouch of flasks three months ago.

This was Leviathan’s mark. Her scales etched in silver into his skin, an eternal symbol of the Blessing that had given him the strength to see the Oracles safely across the sea. The Blessing that had healed him from the fight with Glauca.

This was all the damage she had healed. The wounds that he had done to himself when he chose to sacrifice himself to defeat Glauca and give Luna and her family a chance.

Wounds that had killed him.

He had died.

He had … he had died. Even if his heart had still been beating in the aftermath, if it hadn’t been for the Tide-Mother he would have … he **had** …

Died.

He had **died**. Again. Almost left his son. **Again**.

“Gladiolus? **Gladiolus**!” Gladiolus looked up blearily through the steam and shower water, wondered when Cor had gotten there, and when Gladiolus had gone from standing upright to sprawled out in the shower as if his legs had stopped being able to support him. Maybe they had. They were new legs after all. New legs that Leviathan had stitched together out of scales and flesh and blood after he had- after-.

Gladiolus looked up at Cor, and in his godfather’s eyes his own looked eerie silver, another reminder, another crack and suddenly it was too much, the parts of him that were Thors could only hold back so much and he whispered, “I died.” Cor stared without comprehension, looked him over and froze as he spotted the silver outlines of scales winding up his body and Gladiolus couldn’t stop himself from wheezing, “I died. I died. Glauca was there and he was going to kill Sylva, kill everyone, and I couldn’t let him but I couldn’t win and live so I- I died. I died taking him with me. I died and Leviathan was there and she- she sent me back but I-. I died. I died-I died-I died-!” his voice cracked and his breath left, the magnitude of it all suddenly crashing down.

Three months it had lurked in the back of his mind, unacknowledged and pushed aside, only let out when it broke free in his nightmares. Because it didn’t matter. Because he had made his choice and lived despite it, because he had to concentrate on the here and now, on survival and sailing, on safeguarding Sylva, Ravus, and Luna, on providing for them, on avoiding the Niflheim patrols and getting them somewhere safe. Except now they were safe. Now the mission was over. Now he had time to **think** and **realize** that he **had died**.

He had almost left again. He had almost done it again. Chosen his death over the deaths of others. He had died and almost left behind another son to cry-cry-cry beneath the blue skies. If Leviathan hadn’t taken a liking to him he would have-. Everyone would have been-. His mother, his father, his baby sister, Regis and Cor and Ignis and **Noctis** his precious _Konungr_. He would have **left them all behind**.

Because he had died.

Strong arms pulled him tight to a larger chest beneath the hot spray of the shower, heedless of he water soaking through fine clothes as Cor pressed his face against Gladiolus’s hair and Gladiolus stopped forcing Thors to the forefront and instead let himself be an eleven year old boy who had seen war and been on the run nonstop for three months.

An eleven year old boy who had **died**.

And this wasn’t like the realization that he was not alone, that there were others who had been born with memories of a life once lived. It wasn’t painful relief that dragged tears past Thors’ stoicism. This was uglier, these were tears of terror, of anger, of heartbreak and agony because he was eleven years old and already his life had almost ended —should have ended, would have ended were it not for the Astral charged with safeguarding the children of the seas—. He was a child with past memories of war that should have always stayed in the past, and it wasn’t **fair** to come this far only to break now, and yet he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

Gladiolus pressed his face against his godfather’s shoulder, clutched at the arms holding him tight, and under the muffling roar of the shower head, he **screamed**.

He cried for hours, sobbed into Cor’s shoulder as the man eventually pulled them out of the shower and carried Gladiolus to a chair where he sat down and held his godson in his lap. Gladiolus cried, unable and unwilling to stop even as Cor used one hand to text Clarus and Juno on his phone and his parents came rushing in a few minutes later. He didn’t stop crying even as they ran in, didn’t look up or hear as Cor looked at his parents with haunted eyes and told them what their son had said. He didn’t react as they stared at the silver scale marks winding up his body, a claim and a reminder all in one —a claim Clarus understood, because Sylva had told them of what Gladiolus had done, the sacrifice he had made only for the Tide-Mother to turn it aside with an unexpected Blessing—.

He only reacted when Clarus gently pulled him out of Cor’s arms and sank to the floor with him, held him tight as Juno wrapped her arms around his back and pet his hair while Cor wrapped a calloused hand around his scaled wrist and squeezed tightly. Even then, Gladiolus’s only reaction was to burrow deeper into the familiar, sorely needed comfort of his parents’ touches and cry harder. Because Gladiolus had been a warrior, a sailor, and a guide for months now. He had walked tall and been strong, but now he was safe, and by safety was the last of his strength stolen away. He wasn’t a warrior here. He was a child.

Clarus and Juno stayed with him, held him tight and whispered gentle nothings into his hair even as Cor regretfully stood up and left to go check on their new guests and the guilt-ridden Regis. They held him tight as afternoon bled to evening and the dinner hour came and went. They held him tight as he passed out, and stayed the entire night, shielding him from danger, and soothing him when he woke up screaming from nightmares of metal hands around his throat and the agony of freezing-burning-fracturing in a starburst of reckless sacrifice.

The next day, Gladiolus woke up emotionally wrung out but … lighter. Not fixed, possibly never fixed, but … a little better. Like it was a little easier to breathe. He knew that if he wanted, his parents would allow him to continue to hide in this suite, to not deal with the world. But Gladiolus didn’t … want that. So when he looked up and softly asked if he could go see his _Konungr_ and Iris and Ignis now, Clarus and Juno exchanged tired looks and agreed.

Iris almost bowled him over when she tackled him in a hug, shouting and crying in relief, and when Noctis did the same maneuver seconds later, Gladiolus really did overbalance. He shielded the two of them as they all toppled onto the carpet, hugged them tight and let them cry on him as Iris sobbed how she’d missed him and Noctis yelled at him, angry and upset over how Gladiolus had chosen to run into the fighting rather than away, angry that Noctis had thought Gladiolus was **dead**.

Noctis punched his chest but the blow had no weight behind it and Gladiolus just murmured apologies and reassurances over and over as he held them tight with one arm and carefully extended the other to Ignis, who stood sniffling nearby. Ignis folded into his grip with a muffled sob and Gladiolus buried his face in Noctis’s hair. He didn’t cry, even though he was tempted. Because this was their turn to cry. He had had his turn, and he would have it again later. But right now he would just … bask. In the feel of his family, in the knowledge that he had succeeded. He was alive. Sylva, Ravus, and Luna were all alive, and his king —his son— was safe. For that, everything was worth it.

Noctis’s magic curled around him, ocean currents and swirling blue depths and Gladiolus hummed soothing nothings into black hair as he basked in the feeling of it.

“I’m home,” he whispered hoarsely, for now ignoring the nightmares that lurked in the back of his mind and the outlines of silver scales on his hand that represented a heavy promise, “It’s okay now…”

“I’m home.”


End file.
